With 109 radio stations across the nation of Canada and the power of iHeartRadio fueling such brands as Pure Country Radio, Virgin Radio and heritage Hot Adult Contemporary CHUM in Toronto, Bell Media has received lots of attention in early 2021 for its belt-tightening and growing brand homogenization.
Say what you want, but those changes two years ago likely helped parent company BCE grow its media operating revenue by 4.7% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Higher subscriber and advertising revenue fueled the gains for Montréal-headquartered BCE Inc.
And, this led the company, in part, to raise its dividend payment by 5.2%, or $0.19 CDN per share, to $3.87 CDN.
“Bell’s accomplishments in Q4 and throughout 2022 reflect consistently strong execution by the Bell team on our strategic initiatives and our customer-first approach,” said Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada.
While wireless services are the lynchpin of Bell’s fiscal success, with gains seen in the Q3 2022 following a near-catastrophic outage in July 2022 involving rival Rogers Communications, operating revenue grew to $6.44 billion from $6.21 billion, in Canadian dollars. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $2.44 billion CDN, moving from $2.43 billion CDN. But adjusted EPS dipped to $0.71 CDN, from $0.76 CDN.
Bell Wireless’ contribution to the bottom line was $2.67 billion CDN in Q4.
Total wireline operating revenue was $3.09 billion CDN in the quarter.
But what about its media arm? First, Bell TV added 40,209 net new retail IPTV subscribers in Q4, up 37.7% from 29,191 in Q4 2021. “This represents our best quarterly result in nearly 7 years, reflecting the success of our multi-brand customer segmentation approach and increased customer demand for our app streaming services,” Bibic said.
But, retail satellite TV net subscriber losses were 26,026 in Q4, up from 23,142 in Q4 2021. The year-over-year increase was due to fewer gross activations and higher customer churn, reflecting increased promotional offer intensity compared to last year at the direct broadcast satellite service.
For Bell Media in particular, media operating revenue increased 4.7% in Q4 to $889 million CDN, and by 7.2% to $3,254 million CDN for full-year 2022, driven by both higher year-over-year advertising and subscriber revenues.
Advertising revenue was up 3.8% in Q4, due to strong advertiser demand for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, as well as continued strong out of home and digital growth. This result was achieved “despite soft overall TV and radio advertiser demand due to unfavourable economic conditions.”
Subscriber revenue increased 5.4% in Q4, driven mainly by direct-to-consumer streaming growth at Crave and TSN — the HBO and ESPN, respectively, of Canada. Digital revenues grew 46% in Q4.
