Earnings: Vivendi’s Q1 Profits Up On Mobile, Music

Vivendi, the French media-telco conglomerate, reported Q1 numbers, and its profits rose 41 percent, spurred by client gains at wireless unit SFR and higher music sales. Net income rose to 707 million euros ($910 million) from 501 million euros a year earlier…Profits, which included 97 million euros in financial income, beat expectations.
Digital music and video sales were up…Digital music sales were 111 million euros, or 10 percent of the total, more than double from a year earlier. Vivendi Universal Games more than doubled operating profit to 23 million euros from 11 million euros, boosted by subscriptions to its World of Warcraft, which has more than six million players worldwide.
Meanwhile, the company has rejected an offer from a Norwegian investor’s holding company to break up the company and denied that the proposal came in the form of a takeover offer. CEO Jean-Bernard Levy has said it makes sense to combine content like music with distribution channels like SFR, the French mobile-phone company it owns.
Earnings release here.
From the earnings call transcript: CEO Levy: We also have major assets on mobile telephony with more and more media on mobile telephony services. This means that on this emerging market, we may aim to become one of the leading mobile terminal game groups worldwide by harnessing our various know-hows we have developed across Vivendi Games and SFR. Just a few months ago we set up a mobile games unit in France, next to SFR. They have very close ties with SFR. However, they are part of Vivendi Games because they are about creating games and selling them across the world.

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