INTERVIEW-Thai MCOT sees 10% rise in 2010 sales growth

BANGKOK, Oct 20 - MCOT, Thailand's second most valuable broadcaster, expects 2010 revenue growth of more than 10 percent, above analysts' estimates, on improving advertising and new products.

The country's oldest broadcasting firm has seen advertising "stabilising", while "spending may be coming back" as the economy recovers from its first recession in 11 years, newly appointed president Tanawat Wansom told Reuters.

MCOT runs the third-most popular local TV channel in Thailand after non-listed, army-owned Channel 7 and BEC World.

"We project at least a 10 percent growth next year in terms of top-line with TV advertising spending starting to show some signs of life over recent months," Tanawat said in an interview.

"This year's sale growth will also reach above our 4.4 billion baht ($132 million) target," he said.

Tanawat's estimate was above the 4.8 billion baht ($144 million) forecast by 11 analysts polled by earnings tracker Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, who predict an 8.5 percent rise in 2010 revenues. They also forecast 4.42 billion baht revenue for 2009.

"We've seen a pretty depressed ads market in the first half with advertisers skittish and confidence falling," he said, adding ad spending declined about 7 percent from a year earlier.

Thailand's first TV broadcaster since 1955 is vulnerable to big shifts in TV advertising, which generates about 60 percent of overall revenue. But its prospects are improving as Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy pulls out of a tailspin.

Ratings tracker Nielsen Media said advertising spending at MCOT's Modernnine TV channel in July-August grew over 14 percent, the best growth among Thai TV stations and surpassing industry growth of 4.1 percent in the same period.

SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMBITIONS

The 37-year-old Tanawat, a former Walt Disney Co Buena Vista Pictures executive, has ambitious to transform the former state-owned entity once known as the Mass Communications Organization of Thailand into a Southeast Asian media-content provider.

That could pit the Thai company against regional media heavyweights including Singapore's MediaCorp, which produces Channel News Asia, or the Philippines' GMA Network.

Next year, MCOT plans to roll out several new projects including mobile TV, Internet Protocol TV via broadband, while developing new Digital Video Broadcast Handheld (DVB-H) technology which would bring broadcast services to cell phones.

At the end of 2007, MCOT cooperated with South Korea's SK Telecom Co Ltd for a trial of digital terrestrial TV broadcast under the 58-band UHF system for mobile service users and fixed service users, he said.

Revenue from new media technology is expected to represent 25-30 percent of sales within the next four years, according to industry analysts.

It expects spend about 1 billion baht ($30 million) on investments.

MCOT planned to raise advertising rates of some TV programmes in the first quarter of 2010, Tanawat said, adding its average advertising rate is still relatively low at 310,000 baht ($9,307) per minute. ($1= 33.31 Baht)