Astro continues to face a decline in TV subscription revenue with full year FY20 revenue came in at RM4.9bn, down 10.3% YoY. However, Astro posted a full year net profit of RM655.3m (+39.8% YoY), mainly attributable to lower content costs as FY19 was a major sporting year, as well as lower operating expenses thanks to its on-going cost optimisation efforts. After adjusting for the unrealized forex loss of RM1m, FY20 core net profit came in at RM656.3m. Full year earnings were within ours and consensus’ estimates, accounting for 98% and 96% of FY20F respectively. However, given the uncertainties due to Covid-19 pandemic, we lowered our earnings forecast for FY21-22F by 6%-16% to account for the decline in subscription revenue and lower adex expenditure on weaker consumer sentiment. Furthermore, we are expecting an uptick in Astro’s content cost due to the weakening MYR against the greenback. As such, our DCF derived TP is revised downwards to RM1.80. (RM2.00 previously). Despite the challenging operating environment faced by media industry, we reiterate our Outperform call due to its attractive valuation. Astro is currently trading at a depressed valuation of below -3 SD (Figure 1) while dividend yield remains appealing at 9.3% p.a.

• 4QFY20 revenue declined mainly dragged by the lower contribution from TV and Radio segment. Pay TV ARPU increased marginally to RM100 from RM99.90. TV segment revenue continued to slide by 11.9% YoY to RM1,048m underpinned by the decline in subscription revenue, production revenue, sales of programming rights and advertising revenue. As for its Radio segment, revenue was lower by 3.4% to RM77m due to lower adex spend. Meanwhile, its Home shopping segment revenue grew marginally by 1.6% YoY to RM100.4m due to festive spending. Tactical campaigns saw Astro’s Go Shop registered customer base grew to 2.2m users.

• EBITDA margin continues to show improvement. EBITDA margin (FY20: 35% vs FY19: 29%) improved on the back of lower content cost with the absence of a major sporting event, lower staff related costs as well as marketing and distribution expenses.

• Lower dividend payout. Astro declared a 4th interim dividend of 1.5 sen, thus bringing the total dividend declared to 7.5 sen (FY19: 9 sen). Management decided to reduce the dividend payout to conserve cash to ride out the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, we understand that the group is only taking a conservative approach. Given the group’s ability to generate FCF, we believe Astro is able to maintain its minimum 75% payout dividend policy in FY22-23F. However, our FY21F DPS forecast is based on a lower payout of 65%, which still provides an attractive yield of 9.3%.

• Maintain Outperform. We adjusted down our FY21-22F earnings by 6%-16% as we incorporate lower TV subscription revenue and higher content cost for FY22F given both the major sporting events (UEFA Euro and Olympics) have been postponed to 2021. Consequently, our TP has been revised down to RM1.80 (from RM2.00 previously) but we maintain our Outperform call on Astro. Given that Astro’s share price has fallen sharply by 39% to an all-time low since the release of its previous quarterly result, we opine that the stock’s valuation looks appealing, trading at 7x forward PER, which is below its -3SD of 5-year average.

• Moving forward, while we remain prudent over the unprecedented challenge created by the pandemic, we continue to like Astro due to its on-going cost optimisation efforts and its ability to leverage on existing customer base to build new revenue adjacencies in its home-shopping, broadband, digital and OTT platforms. Furthermore, the group remains committed to expand its existing content library (local vernacular and international content) to further strengthen its position as Malaysia’s entertainment destination of choice.

Source: PublicInvest Research - 26 Mar 2020