KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 — Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd’s pre-tax profit for financial year ended Jan 31, 2014 (FY14) fell to RM569.23 million from RM574.94 million in the same period last year.

Revenue, however, increased to RM4.79 billion from RM4.27 billion in the same period of 2013, it said in a filing to Bursa Malaysia today.

For the fourth quarter ended Jan 31, 2014, its pre-tax profit increased to RM127.16 million from RM114.72 in the same quarter of 2013.

Its revenue surged to RM1.26 billion from RM1.13 billion in the same quarter of 2013.

Astro said the higher revenue was due to the increase in subscriptions, advertising and other revenue.

Astro Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Rohana Rozhan, said the company has delivered its fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue in FY2014.

“This is driven by expansion of the customer base, higher take-up of value-added products and services as well as advertising expenditure growth,” she told media briefing on the company’s financial year results here today.

Rohana said Astro has grown its customer base by 400,000 subscribers to 3.9 million subscribers and completed the swap-out of its Pay-TV customers onto the Astro B.yond platform.

On outlook, she said the company would release its eight new transponders by the second half of this year and this was expected to push its top-line revenue by year-end.

“With the additional transponders, we will significantly increase our broadcast capacity. This will enable us to line up a comprehensive suite of value-added, content-rich and feature-packaged offerings for Malaysians this year,” she said.

On the joint-venture with South Korea-based company, GS Home Shopping Inc, Rohana said the home shopping business was expected to be available in August or September this year.

“The home shopping service will be made available on the pay-TV services without further investment required in set-top-boxes and broadcast infrastructure,” she said. — Bernama