Rentrak fiscal Q4 earnings rise 33%
DIGITAL: Growth in audience-measurement business boosts margins
By Danny King -- Video Business, 6/9/2009
JUNE 9 | DIGITAL: Rentrak’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings rose 33% from a year ago as sales at its higher-margin media-audience data tracking service increased on new agreements while revenue at its lower-margin DVD-distribution unit fell slightly.
Net income for the quarter ended March 31 was $2.25 million, or 21¢ a share, up from $1.69 million, or 15¢, a year earlier, with sales little changed at $22.3 million, the company said in a statement today. Rentrak was expected to earn 5¢ a share on $22.4 million in sales, the average analyst estimates in a Thomson Reuters survey.
Revenue in the company’s Advanced Media Information (AMI) division rose more than 16% to $3.3 million for the quarter.
In March, Rentrak said it would start providing audience-measurement services for faith-based The Inspiration Network, which is available to more than 56 million U.S. households. The company also reached agreements to provide video-on-demand audience-measurement services for InDemand Networks and Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures. Additionally, Rentrak said it would work with VOD provider SeaChange International to perform VOD audience-measurement and advertising-insertion services. The company reached an agreement to start a linear TV measurement trial with Charter Communications.
“Over the next 12 to 15 months, Rentrak will be intently focused on generating increasing revenue streams from our Essentials development activities, while creating new and valuable products and services that best serve our customers and industry,” Rentrak CEO Paul Rosenbaum said in the statement. “After spending the last two years attracting key data partners and developing relationships with the country’s largest operators, we are now processing live, linear TV data from more than 10 million set-top boxes.”
Rentrak’s sales from its primary pay-per-transaction division fell 2.6% from a year earlier to $19 million and accounted for 85% of the company’s sales, down from 87% a year earlier.
For the fiscal year, Rentrak’s profit rose 17%, as revenue edged up 1.9% to $95 million.
