Vivendi reported first quarter revenues of EUR 3.46 billion, up 5.7 percent year-on-year organically. While the organic growth rate was broadly stable for a third consecutive quarter, revenue growth on a reported basis accelerated to 10.7 percent, mainly reflecting the acquisition of French publishing group Editis. Universal Music remained by far the group's best performing division, posting sales worth EUR 1.50 billion, with organic growth accelerating to 18.8 percent from 12.3 percent in the previous quarter. This was enough to offset the ongoing decline in Canal Plus' revenues, as well as slower performance at advertising group Havas and at the business line combining Vivendi's smaller businesses.
Further progress was made with Vivendi's plan to sell up to 50 percent of Universal Music's share capital to one or more strategic partners. PwC is currently conducting vendor due diligence and the selection of banking partners and advisors for the sale should be completed shortly. In the first quarter, the company benefitted from the continuing strong growth in music subscriptions and streaming services (+28.1%), which accounted for nearly half of Universal Music's total sales.
At Canal Plus, the French operations saw revenue decline by 5 percent to EUR 761 million, due to ongoing customer losses. Individual subscribers fell to 4.64 million when excluding the wholesale base (4.73 million in the previous quarter and 4.87 million in the year-earlier period). Similarly, wholesale customers dipped slightly quarter-on-quarter to reach 3.08 million, from 3.09 at end-December, while decreasing by 56,000 since March 2017.
Canal Plus' international operations posted revenues of EUR 401 million, up 4.7 percent organically, as the customer base added 695,000 net additions over the year to reach 7.43 million subscribers. This progression partly offset the revenue drops posted by the French division and by production company Studiocanal, with overall revenues at Canal Plus decreasing 3.3 percent organically to EUR 1.25 billion.
