Private Media Group of Barcelona has released its latest figures, showing it ended with online sales helping to push overall sales up against the previous year. Web business was up $2.3m to $21.6m; a 12% growth. According to Private’s chief financial officer Johan Gillborg this was largely due to the relaunch of Private.com.
Total sales for PMG were $33.9m, against $33.7m in 2009; a 1% rise. Operations have also improved, with a $6.3m loss for the last financial year against $29.9m for the previous one.
Speaking about the relaunch of Private.com, Gillborg commented: “It has proved to have improved conversion rates and during the second half of 2010 the new membership pay-site attracted 73% more unique visitors compared to the previous one in the same period in 2009.”
Less sunny news came from the mobile division though, with a 6% fall in sales against 2009. Yet Private hopes to reinvigorate this sector with new smartphone apps to bolster traffic. Despite the downturn Gillborg said that the GameLink division had seen success with its proprietary mobile solution. This enables smartphone users to stream over 15,000 movies and offers a white-label version to other mobile companies.
While praising its Sureflix division for contributing to Private’s bottom line, particularly with its new Maleflixxx Mobile platform, Gillborg added: “Our weekly sales for the GameLink VOD mobile solution have been steadily increasing since its launch. With the smartphone market growing rapidly, we expect to generate substantial growth from our mobile VOD initiatives going forward.”
Private’s DVD and magazine business continues to contract though, along with a 14% dip in broadcast sales. Calling the double-digit drop in DVD and magazine sales an ‘industry-wide’ issue, Gillborg went on to say: “During 2010, the DVD market has continued to shrink, with sales for our physical products declining by 18 per cent. However, the DVD business is by no means dead even in this competitive landscape. The content providers that manage to survive the current ‘clean out’ will control the DVD market going forward.”
