Chief financial officer Surakarn Sirimothya said yesterday that the company’s financial results in the second quarter were impressive, with an 18-per-cent increase in revenue to Bt801.7 million, from Bt678.92 million in the same period last year, mainly driven by ad revenue from its digital Workpoint TV station. The company also posted a 31.71-per-cent surge in net profit to Bt133.89 million for the quarter.

“We aim to keep this momentum until the end of this year to achieve our revenue target of Bt3 billion, a 23-per-cent increase from Bt2.4 billion last year, and post a net profit margin of 10 per cent,” Surakarn said.

The impressive results mainly came from proper cost management after expanding its production facilities from nine to 16 studios to respond to increasing demand for TV-show production. The company also budgeted Bt550 million for this year’s TV production costs.

The advertising utilisation rate at Workpoint TV has been running at about 78-79 per cent, while average ratings last month were 1.19 points.

Workpoint TV is now ranked No 3 with a 10.42-per-cent market share of the nationwide audience, after Channel 7 with a 28.8-per-share and Channel 3 with 18.78 per cent.

“Given these factors, we are planning to increasing our average advertising rate by at least 10 per cent from the current Bt53,000 per minute, effective next year,” he said.

Digital TV is now a major revenue contributor for the company. In the first half, the TV business contributed 82.2 per cent of total revenue of Bt1.37 billion, followed by 4.8 per cent from event business, 3.6 per cent from concert organising and 2.4 per cent from others.