UPDATE 2-Warner Music loss widens, shares fall

Thu Aug 6, 2009 10:33am EDT

* Loss of 25 cents/shr; Street view 16 cents/shr loss

* Revenue falls 9.3 pct to $769 mln; Street view $761 mln

* Shares down 5.1 pct

(Adds share move, CEO comments from call)

NEW YORK, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Warner Music Group Corp WMG.N posted a wider-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday as recorded music sales continued to tumble, sending shares down over 5 percent.

The world's third-largest music company said its loss from continuing operations was $37 million, or 25 cents a share, in the fiscal third quarter ended June 30, compared with a year-earlier loss of $9 million, or 6 cents a share.

Revenue fell 9.3 percent to $769 million.

Analysts were expecting revenue of $760.9 million and a loss of 16 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Revenue from digital music grew by 5.4 percent to $175 million, accounting for nearly 23 percent of total revenue.

But "industry-wide, the growth in digital recorded music revenue is still not compensating for the decline in revenue from physical recorded music," Warner Music's Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman said on a conference call.

Top sellers in the three months to June 30 included Green Day, Flo Rida and the soundtrack from the film "Twilight."

Shares of the music company fell 5.1 percent to $5.36 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Anupreeta Das; Editing by John Wallace and Gerald E. McCormick)

Comments (0)
This discussion is now closed. We welcome comments on our articles for a limited period after their publication.