PETALING JAYA: Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd
will be focusing on building high-quality revenue streams and reducing its business costs.
Group chief executive officer Euan Smith said navigating the current operating environment demanded further radical changes focusing on costs.
“We continue to aggressively shed costs on our legacy operations and steer our new, adjacent businesses to operate in a flexible, asset-light manner, enabling us to redirect the majority of available capital into local content and product innovation investments that we know excite our customers.
“Resource allocations continue to be strategically assessed to optimise outcomes and impact, with a laser focus on cost and margins,” he said in the company’s annual report.
As the group works to remove legacy costs, Smith said Astro is concurrently investing to digitalise and grow its ancillary businesses, taking an asset-light approach wherever possible.
“As we are in this period of transition, both cost bases, legacy and new, are running concurrently, with legacy costs set to gradually taper off over time.
“We are always looking for ways to use automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve content, technology and product suites.”
Cost aside, Smith said work is progressing across the group’s key revenue pillars.
“Our goal is to stabilise the pay-TV revenue amid structural shifts and concurrently, to build high-quality revenue streams from the adjacent businesses to deliver long-term sustainability.
“Our playbook is allied with our pay-TV peers globally, some of whom started their journeys earlier and are now beginning to reap the rewards of their transformations.”
Smith said the overhaul of Astro’s pay-TV product has been focused on the group’s customers’ evolving needs.
“We now believe we have a compelling product and customer service to offer, as evidenced by another increase in Astro’s customer satisfaction in the financial year 2024 (FY24).
“We continue to roll out U-Boxes to current and new customers alike, as the data clearly shows that net promoter score and churn are significantly better for customer cohorts enjoying these U-Boxes and our latest packs.”
Smith noted that Astro closed FY24 at the one million installed mark for U-Boxes, which was a jump of 22% year-on-year.
“As regards our customer base, the majority of new customers are aged 40 and below, reflecting our continued relevance with younger consumers despite the wide and often free choices available in the market.
“Mindful of the Malaysian macroeconomic situation and pessimistic consumer climate, we have created more compelling entry-level products and pricing to improve accessibility to a wider market segment.”
