After the successful 2007 fiscal year, the Highlight Group also finished the first quarter of 2008 with another improvement in earnings. Net consolidated earnings increased from CHF 8.4 million in the previous year to CHF 10.1 million this year, a growth of 20.2%. Highlight shareholders’ share of earnings actually improved by 32.9% and amounts to CHF 9.3 million. This results in earnings per share of CHF 0.21 CHF – an increase of CHF 0.06 in comparison to the previous year.
Revenues of the first quarter came to CHF 134.3 million, a year-on-year decline of CHF 22.1 million or 14.1%. This is primarily a result of service income, which moved down from CHF 100.4 million in the previous year to the current figure of CHF 60.7 million. Service income includes revenues from both the Sports and Event Marketing division, and from the marketing of TV service productions. Being largely dependent on the balance sheet date, recognition of income from service productions is par-ticularly subject to relatively large fluctuations during the year.
Sales of CHF 33.5 million, which primarily include revenues from home entertainment, remained largely unchanged on the previous year’s high level of CHF 34.0 million. License income enjoyed good performance with revenues almost doubling from CHF 22.0 million to CHF 40.1 million. This primarily includes revenues from theatrical distribution, which increased substantially in the first quarter of 2008 as against the figure for the previous year.
At segment level, the Film division posted a highly positive performance. Although segment revenues at CHF 114.9 million were down 15.0% as against the previous year, the segment result improved to CHF 6.9 million, an increase of 46.8%. This development reflects the considerably improved perform-ance in theatrical distribution with generally stable earnings in home entertainment. The Sports and Event Marketing division generated revenues of CHF 19.5 million and thus falls 8.0% short of the fig-ure from the previous year. The decline can be attributed primarily to reduced foreign exchange gains and investments in the sale of commercial rights to the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Cup for the 2009/10 to 2011/12 seasons. Accordingly, the segment result declined from CHF 11.1 mil-lion to CHF 8.4 million.
In terms of liquidity, cash and cash equivalents in the Highlight Group amounted to CHF 222.9 million as at March 31, 2008. This corresponds to an increase of CHF 22.4 million as against December 31, 2007. At the same time, liabilities subject to interest and loans were reduced by CHF 18.6 million to CHF 298.4 million. Both developments led to a considerable reduction of CHF 41.0 million in net debt to CHF 75.5 million at the end of the quarter.
In this context, the Highlight Group views the further development of this current fiscal year with op-timism and expects consolidated revenues of between CHF 480 and CHF 500 million as well as earn-ings per share of between EUR 0.38 and EUR 0.40.
The interim report as at March 31, 2008 is available for download from www.highlight-communications.ch as of today.
For questions, please contact:
HIGHLIGHT COMMUNICATIONS AG
Investor Relations
4133 Pratteln BL / Switzerland
Phone 0041 61 816 96 91
e-mail ir@hlcom.chir@hlcom.ch
