Money Digest - March 8, 2006

Profit adds up for Aegis Group

U.K. media buying and planning firm Aegis Group posted a 9% gain in full-year 2005 profits Tuesday driven by acquisitions and higher Internet advertising spending by clients. CEO Robert Lerwill said 2006 looks like a strong year for ad spending thanks to the Winter Olympics and soccer's World Cup. The company expects global ad spending to increase by about 5.8% for the year. Its 2005 underlying pretax profit rose to £100.2 million ($173.9 million). Revenue rose 16.5%, or 7.2% excluding acquisitions and currency effects, to £870.4 million ($1.51 billion).



VU Games unveils mobile unit

Vivendi Universal Games on Tuesday announced the formation of a new division, Vivendi Universal Games Mobile, to take advantage of the growing mobile games market. Based in Meudon near Paris, the operation will have regional headquarters in Los Angeles for North America and Singapore for the Asia-Pacific area. VU Games also named Paul Maglione president of the new division, reporting to VU Games chief strategy and marketing officer Cindy Cook. Maglione most recently was senior vp publishing and marketing at I-Play. He has held senior marketing posts at CNN, Turner Broadcasting and NBC Europe, among others.



Cabler Insight at a loss in Q4

Small cable operator Insight Communications said Tuesday that it swung to a fourth-quarter loss despite a 14% revenue gain. Revenue rose to $290.1 million, but higher expenses and other factors led to a loss of $68.5 million compared with a year-ago profit of $6 million. Insight ended last year with 2.36 million total revenue-generating units, up 11%, and 1.28 million basic-cable subscribers, up by 9,100 after customer losses in 2004. The firm also added 139,900 net high-speed Internet users for the year to end with 470,400 and 67,500 digital cable users to end with 518,800.