KOOS BEKKER: We cut back asymmetrically

KB:...you cut back asymmetrically, so you cut your overseas trip, you leave your car for a year longer before you replace it, you cut your hotel bill, but you buy more chocolate, you buy more CDs. You pay your pay-TV subscription because it's the cheapest form to fill an hour more or less tolerably for the family. So, just by accident, pay-TV tends to be relatively recession-proof. When there's a boom we won't benefit much. We won't lift like some other companies would.
On the Internet we were equally lucky. Many Internet companies have an exposure to advertising. Our advertising exposure is fairly limited. It's about 16% of our total income as a group. We happen to be in e-commerce and subscription services - Tencent and so on - and these things benefited. People spend time at home, and what do you do? You potter around on the Internet and you go buy a new pair of takkies, and we earn some income.

SHOOT: The recession will send people home. Thus home-based enterprises and services will do better.

clipped from www.moneyweb.co.za ALEC HOGG: Koos, there are not many major media companies around the world that have managed to lift headline earnings at all. Most of them have been contracting, and your revenue growth has been strong. Is your door being knocked on a lot now by perhaps bigger media players wanting to get closer to you? KOOS BEKKER: Alec, not really. I think most media companies are in such bad shape that they are more defensively inclined at the moment than aggressive. But, you know, we were just lucky. I think in general business managers, when bad luck hits them, complain about fortune, and when they have a stroke of luck they usually attribute it to their own foresight. I don't think we showed any foresight. If you look at pay-TV, it just happens to be, accidentally, recession-proof. What happens in a  recession? You lose your bonus, you have to cut back.