UPDATE 2-Mexico's Televisa swings to quarterly loss on satellite TV slump
(Adds estimates, background)
By Carolina Pulice
April 25 (Reuters) - Grupo Televisa, Mexico's largest broadcaster, on Tuesday reported a first-quarter loss, missing analyst forecasts for a profit, dragged by a slump in satellite TV unit Sky.
The company reported a loss of 0.28 pesos per share. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had forecast earnings per share of 0.09 pesos.
The group posted a net loss of 789 million pesos ($43.8 million), swinging from the 52.6 billion pesos profit it posted a year earlier.
Televisa's revenues edged down 0.5% to 18.52 billion pesos, slightly missing the Refinitiv estimate of 18.76 billion pesos.
Televisa attributed the slump to a 215,000 drop in its revenue generating units (RGUs) - an industry term for business or individual subscribers - at Sky, bringing the unit's sales down nearly 12%.
The cable business segment, however, added about 314,500 RGUs over the quarter and 84,700 broadband net additions, Televisa said, bringing the unit's sales up by close to 3%.
In December last year, Mexican peer Megacable had rejected an offer from Televisa to merge their pay TV and broadband operations.
($1 = 18.0201 pesos at end-March) (Reporting by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Sarah Morland and Leslie Adler)
