Arbitron Inc. Reports Operating Results (10-Q)

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Aug 07, 2012
Arbitron Inc. (ARB, Financial) filed Quarterly Report for the period ended 2012-06-30.

Arbitron Inc. has a market cap of $956.1 million; its shares were traded at around $35.87 with a P/E ratio of 16.9 and P/S ratio of 2.3. The dividend yield of Arbitron Inc. stocks is 1.1%. Arbitron Inc. had an annual average earning growth of 2.5% over the past 10 years. GuruFocus rated Arbitron Inc. the business predictability rank of 3-star.

Highlight of Business Operations:

Historically, our quantitative radio ratings services and related software have accounted for a substantial majority of our revenue. For each of the six-month periods ended June 30, 2012, and 2011, our quantitative radio ratings services and related software accounted for approximately 89% of our revenue. Approximately 77% of our total revenue for the six-month period ended June 30, 2012, was derived from local radio ratings services, of which approximately 73% was from the PPM Markets and 27% was from our Diary markets.

Revenue. Revenue increased by 9.1% or $8.7 million for the three-month period ended June 30, 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011, due primarily to a $6.9 million increase in PPM-based ratings service revenue, in particular the continued phase-in of contracted price increases, a $1.4 million increase in Scarborough qualitative service revenue, and a $1.0 million increase in Diary rating service revenue. These revenue increases for our PPM and Diary services also included an aggregate $1.2 million benefit from the timing of items associated with data from prior surveys.

Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue increased by 3.6% or $2.2 million for the three-month period ended June 30, 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011. Cost of revenue increased primarily due to a $1.1 million increase in Scarborough royalties, and a $0.6 million increase associated with our Arbitron Mobile service acquired during the third quarter of 2011.

Revenue. Revenue increased by 7.2% or $14.2 million for the six-month period ended June 30, 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011, due primarily to a $12.4 million increase in PPM-based ratings service revenue, in particular the continued phase-in of contracted price increases, a $1.4 million increase in our Scarborough qualitative service revenue, and a $0.8 million increase associated with our Arbitron Mobile service, which was acquired during the third quarter of 2011.

Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue increased by 3.7% or $3.9 million for the six-month period ended June 30, 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011. Cost of revenue increased primarily due to a $1.3 million increase in costs associated with our cross platform initiatives, as well as costs incurred related to Arbitron Mobile, which was acquired in July 2011, a $1.1 million increase in Scarborough royalty costs, a $0.6 million increase in aggregate costs associated with address based sampling, in-person recruiting and cell-phone household recruiting, and a $0.6 million increase in PPM variable costs, including higher survey participant incentives and panel management costs, for the six-month period ended June 30, 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011.

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