Rentrak fiscal Q3 earnings double
Audience-tracking business jumps on Dish, NBC deals
By Danny King -- Video Business, 2/3/2009
FEB. 3 | Rentrak said today that its fiscal third-quarter earnings doubled from a year earlier on a surge in sales for its media audience-tracking services and a tax benefit. The company’s businesses include revenue-sharing DVD distribution and media-audience data tracking.
Net income for the quarter ended Dec. 31 rose 119% to $1.2 million, or 11¢ a share, up from $547,000, or 5¢, a year earlier, as sales fell slightly to $23 million, the company said. Rentrak was expected to earn 8¢ a share on $25.2 million in sales, the average analyst estimates in a Thomson Financial survey.
Rentrak’s sales from its primary pay-per-transaction division fell, consistent with the 5.7% decline in U.S. home entertainment sales last year, according to data compiled by Video Business and Rentrak. The unit’s revenue dropped 7% from a year earlier to $19.7 million and accounted for 86% of the company’s sales, down from 89% a year earlier.
Rentrak’s advanced media information division sales surged 20% from a year earlier to $3.2 million, or 14% of the company’s revenue, and accounted for a third of Rentrak’s gross profit. The company has been striving to augment its primary DVD distribution business by boosting sales from its media-measurement services, which are designed to compete with media-ratings research firms such as Nielsen.
Since November, Rentrak has signed agreements for its viewer-measurement services with Dish Network and NBC Universal. The agreement with Dish, whose 13.8 million subscribers trail only DirecTV’s 17.3 million among U.S. satellite TV services, was for Rentrak’s TV Essentials service, while the multiyear agreement with General Electric’s NBC Universal last month was for Rentrak’s Mobile Essentials mobile-video audience measurement service.
Rentrak’s TV Essentials service tracks audience data from 9 million set-top boxes, up from the 20,000 set-top boxes tracked when the service launched 18 months ago, Rentrak CEO Paul Rosenbaum said in the statement today.
