In the medium term, revenues are expected to increase to around € 100 million, accompanied by an EBIT margin of 10%. As suggested, the earnings before tax (EBT) are at € –6.5 million due to group restructuring.
CN: anticipates positive performance in 2017
Cologne, 07. March 2017.
In the current financial year, _wige MEDIA AG anticipates revenues of around € 60 million, EBITDA of € 2.7 million and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of € 1.5 million. In the medium term, revenues are expected to grow to around € 100 million, with an EBIT margin of 10%. The company’s Management Board has today approved the respective medium-term planning. _wige MEDIA AG will benefit from a corporation and trade tax loss carryforward of around € 45 million at year-end 2016. In line with the forecast, the provisional, as yet unaudited, 2016 annual financial statements, which include the discontinued broadcast business respectively, report revenues of around € 60 million due to group restructuring and earnings before tax (EBT) of € –6.5 million. As part of the Group’s restructuring process, the company sold _wige BROADCAST gmbh, a loss-making business with TV production for domestic and international broadcasters, associations and organisers, as well as _wige SOLUTIONS gmbh, a low-margin and capital intensive media technology business in their entirety. The transactions have meanwhile been concluded. The purchase price for the sold operations stood at € 4 million in total, € 3.5 million of which for _wige Solutions gmbh and € 0.5 million for _wige Broadcast GmbH. _wige MEDIA AG received € 1.6 million in cash from the transaction. One-off non-cash charges of € 3.2 million arose from the disposals.
Expansion with scalable digital business, international projects and live events
In the future, _wige MEDIA AG has plans to grow in the scalable digital business, in the high-margin international project business, as well as in business with live events. Through a partnership with the German Football Association (DFB), the company intends to equip German amateur football clubs with special video technology that enables games to be transmitted live in a high quality and fully automatically using the new “sporttotal.tv” platform. Allianz Deutschland AG, Deutsche Post AG and Telekom Deutschland GmbH together with Microsoft support the wholly-owned subsidiary of _wige MEDIA AG as founding partners, with BILD as media partner. Spectators can, for instance, use the sporttotal app to direct how they view a game, determine the perspective and share scenes on social media. As early as the current 2016/2017 season, 50 clubs in Northern Regional League as well as in the south and north Bavarian leagues are to be equipped with the systems in stages. The streaming offering can be accessed via the sporttotal app as well as through sporttotal.tv, BFV.de and FUSSBALL.DE, the DFB’s platform for amateur football.