CTC Media's revenue for 2015 decreased by half in dollar terms, from $710.4 million in 2014 to $350.56 million. In rubles, the company's income decreased by 24%, while the income of the entire television advertising market decreased by 14%.

In the office of the STS Media company (Photo: Artem Geodakyan/TASS)

CTC Media's consolidated operating revenue in 2015 amounted to $350.56 million, a decrease of 50.7% compared to the previous year. In 2014, the company showed income of $710.4 million. This is stated in its annual report published on NASDAQ (CTC Media has been traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2006).

In rubles, the total revenue of the media holding in 2015 decreased by only 24%, advertising revenue by 20%. The holding's operating profit in dollars fell by 97% - from $157.9 million in 2014 to $4.6 million.

The holding's net loss at the end of last year amounted to $487 million, while in 2014 it showed a profit of $109 million. This loss, as indicated in the statements, reflects the company's losses from the sale of 75% of the operating business to the YuTV holding. CTC Media classified its assets as discontinued operations in connection with the sale to the YuTV holding.

The company also explains the deterioration in financial performance by the fall in the television advertising market in 2015 - according to the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (AKAR), advertising sales on Russian TV last year decreased by 14%.

In addition, STS Media points to a decrease in the share of the holding’s main TV channel, STS: in 2015, in the target audience of 10–45 years old, it decreased to 8.2 from 10.2% in 2014. The shares of other large federal channels also fell, the reports note: the share of Channel One in the audience 10-45 years old decreased from 12.1 to 11.5%, TNT - from 13 to 12.8%, and NTV - from 7. 8 to 6.7%. Nevertheless, the STS channel showed the strongest decline among the largest channels.

The share of two other channels of the CTC Media holding, Domashny and CTC Love, was growing. At Domashny (in the target audience among women 25-59 years old) it increased to 3.6 from 3.3%, and at CTC Love - to 1 from 0.6% (in the target audience all viewers from 11 to 34 years old ). The Peretz TV channel was relaunched in the fall of 2015, now it is called Che. Its share fell from 2.1% in 2014 to 1.9% (all viewers 25–49 years old).

In September 2015, CTC Media officially announced that it was signing a final agreement to sell 75% of its operating business to the YuTV holding of Alisher Usmanov and Ivan Tavrin. The deal was closed in December.

The deal allowed STS Media to comply with the new requirements of the law “On Mass Media,” which since 2016 has prohibited foreigners from owning more than 20% of the founder of any Russian media outlet. Until this moment, almost 38.6% of the parent CTC Media, registered in the USA, belonged to the Swedish Modern Times Group (MTG), 36.07% of the shares were traded on NASDAQ, the remaining 25.4% - to the Cyprus Telcrest, associated with Rossiya Bank » Yuri Kovalchuk.

The deal was structured in two stages. First, the American parent company CTC Media Inc. sold 75% of the shares of STS Investments (which holds the company's operating business) to the YuTV holding. In February 2016, YuTV paid all the funds due to the shareholders of CTC Media - the total amount for 75% of the operating business was $193 million. Now CTC Media must distribute these funds, as well as its own cash in the amount of about $248 million, among the selling shareholders.

The second stage will be leaving the exchange - as stated in the reports, the holding plans to do this by the end of the second quarter of 2015. In March, he received permission to buy back shares of the parent company CTC Media from MTG and minority shareholders from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury, which will allow him to leave NASDAQ.

CTC Media's dollar revenue fell by half in 2015