Net income for the quarter increased to $15.8 million, or $0.59 per share, compared with $15.4 million, or $0.55 per share, for Q3 2011. That’s an increase in earnings per share of 7.3%. Revenue was $114.3 million, an increase of 8.3% over revenue of $105.6 million in the Q3 2011. Contributing to the increase was the nearly completed phase-in of price increases for the PPM service as well as annual escalators in the company’s multi-year radio ratings contracts.
Costs and expenses for Q3 increased by 11.4% to $86.1 million in 2012 from $77.2 million in 2011. Factors contributing to the growth of third quarter costs include the previously announced incremental costs associated with in-person recruitment, address-based sampling and cell-phone household sampling as well as increased investments in Arbitron Mobile and the previously noted impairment charge.
For the nine months ended September 30, net income increased 11.2% to $43.6 million compared with $39.2 million in 2011. Earnings per share (diluted) for the first nine months of 2012 increased 13.4% to $1.61 compared with $1.42 for the first nine months of 2011.
Revenue for the first nine months of 2012 was $325.1 million, an increase of 7.6% compared to revenue of $302.2 million for the same period in 2011.
Costs and expenses for the nine months ended September 30 increased by 7.3% to $255.0 million from $237.7 million.
Bill Kerr, Arbitron CEO, was unable to make the call, so Sean Creamer, Arbitron EVP/COO held the call. He discussed, among other things:
Recent trends in the radio industry
— Arbitron and comScore working together on cross-platform initiative for ESPN
— Integrating census-level data from PCs, mobile devices, and television set-top boxes with single-source measurement capabilities of PPM technology. They plan to track and report the consumption of video, audio and display content across radio, television, PCs, smartphones, and tablets.
–The latest cross-platforming strategy for cross-platform in their pilot for the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement.
Listen to the audio here:
[audio:Sean-Creamer-102412.mp3|titles=Sean Creamer, EVP, Arbitron]
