content distribution arqiva
UK-based satellite services specialist Arqiva is going through some internal changes, with existing CEO Tom Bennie stepping down once a new CEO has been appointed, and a restructuring of the organisation into three divisions with Nick Thompson looking after Arqiva’s broadcast & media division. Thompson is supervising a business that’s in robust good shape, helped by its wide portfolio of revenues and pushed along by the UK’s aggressive analogue switch-off of its terrestrial TV system and conversion to digital. Chris Forrester reports.
Arqiva hungry for more B
ut Arqiva is much more than the above. There’s its wireless towers business, its play-out (‘media’) businesses, and - of key interest to us - its satellite
services operation including the UK’s largest cluster of uplink dishes, and with its clients comprise some of the very best blue-chip broadcasters in the business. “Our underlying numbers are extremely solid,” said Thompson. “We undertook two meaty rounds of financing in 2005 and 2007 in order to acquire National Grid Wireless.” Thompson continued: “Our investors are themselves well financed, and each - or all - of them could well consider making further investments in us, and our progress. There would probably have to be some equity investments into the business should that [expansion] happen. But Arqiva also continually looks at potential opportunities from its own resources. In other words we are far from closed in our thinking. However, there’s a preference, at least in the short term, to focus on organic growth but even this involves some significant capital expenditure.
8 l ibe l january/february 2011 l
www.ibeweb.com
By and large Europe has not even started to think about radio.
“We are as well-funded as we need to be, but we are always ready to consider others,” added Thompson. “We have and are acquiring some unique skillsets and these are reflected in the near-weekly RFPs we receive. They see what we can offer. The only problem for us is that we are in the middle of a very tough workload and set of deadlines to meet. And half-way through the operation the government decided it needed to take Channels 61 and 62 out of the mix, which meant we had to re-engineer quite a few elements of the network. It means we are busy.”
Arqiva’s MUKBH* EBITDA revenues (year to 30 June) 2009 £304 million 2010 £330 million
*MUKBH is Macquarie UK Broadcast Holdings Ltd, Arqiva’s holding company.
Arqiva’s geographical split (based on £823 million revenues) UK
Continental Europe Rest of World Total
£684 million £77.5 million £61.4 million £823.3 million
The upside benefit for Arqiva is that while every European nation is committed to its Absolute Switch-Off (ASO) date, they are not all happening at the same time, and even the most enthusiastic governments can slip and slide as regards that final TV date, let alone see delays occurring for unexpected Snafus. “Then there’s the radio side of the business,” said Thompson. “Perhaps the bandwidth implications are not quite so major, but it is a huge headache for some nations.”
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