Grupo Televisa, Mexico’s largest broadcaster, expects its ViX streaming service to be profitable by the end of 2023, Chief Executive Alfonso de Angoitia said Friday.
TelevisaUnivision, a joint venture with U.S. broadcaster Univision, earlier this year launched the Spanish-language streaming service ViX, which will compete with established rivals like Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video.
De Angoitia said about 50% of the subscribers for ViX+, the paid version of the platform, were coming from the ad-based version of the service through the app shared by both. He declined to give detailed subscriber numbers, saying it was too early to draw conclusions.
The company posted on Thursday a net profit of 1.118 billion pesos ($55.6 million), a 47% increase from a year earlier. The company’s revenue edged up 3.6% to 19.252 billion pesos from the year-earlier period.
Shares of Televisa were up more than 2% on Friday morning.
Televisa plans to create a sports and gaming spinoff of some of its businesses, including its Club America soccer team, the iconic Azteca stadium in Mexico City, and gaming operations. Those businesses accounted for about 7.4% of consolidated revenue and about 3.4% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), executives said.
The modernization of Azteca stadium ahead of the next World Cup would take substantial capital expenditure, a financial responsibility that would fall on the new spinoff.
