Austar first-half profit drops 42%

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Austar United Communications' first-half profit has dropped 42%.

For the six months to June 30, net profit was $20.69 million compared with $35.5 million for the same period a year earlier.

Austar revenue lifted 6.3 per cent to $351.86 million.

AAP

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Chief executive John Porter said

"The 2nd half of 2010 will be an exciting time for Austar and its customers, with the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games showcased in HD over 6 dedicated channels, and the launch of a range of key programming that has traditionally connected well with subscribers."

Total television subscribers grew to 747,148 following a net subscriber gain for the quarter of 3,389, and an 18,429 increase compared with the first half in 2009.Meanwhile, customer churn decreased from 1.40 per cent in the first half of 2009 to 1.36 per cent.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...729-10wla.html

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AUSTAR Chief executive John Porter jokes that after 15 years he has given up waiting for the regional pay-TV group to merge with Foxtel.
Porter agrees there is still "so much compelling industrial logic" to create a truly national pay-TV operator with more than 2.3 million subscribers, but concedes that in the past six months he has begun thinking "it may never happen".

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AUSTAR chief executive John Porter says he underestimated the downturn in consumer activity this year, but is confident demand will pick up

He underestimated the downturn? I don't know how , the financial crisis and the extra new channels on freeview plus the fact that paytv has become boring and repetitive

Austar posting the weakest second-quarter residential subscriber growth in 5 years

Analysts were more excited by the amount of money Austar had been able to extract from each customer by selling them more expensive packages or MyStar set-top boxes. Average revenue per user was up 5 per cent compared with the first six months of last year to $84.69.

The phantom was confused by this last statement and looked at his dictionary.
One word SUCKERS!!!!