ITV PLC (LON:ITV) shares nudged higher on Friday following the announcement of two small strategic investments by the broadcaster in announcements on Thursday afternoon.
The FTSE 100-listed firm revealed it has agreed to invest A$17.7mln (£9.6mln) into its BritBox Australia partnership over a three year period, with the service expected to launch in the Autumn.
READ: ITV earnings fall by half amid ad revenue slump
BritBox Australia is a joint venture between ITV and BBC Studios to offer the subscription on-demand streaming service to the Australian market.
In a second announcement, ITV said it has also invested US$1.375mln (£1mln) for a minority shareholding in Cognitive Logic Inc, the owner of ITV commercial partner and data infrastructure business InfoSum.
InfoSum helps connect and activate separated datasets without putting customer data or personally identifiable information at risk.
In a note on Friday, analysts at Shore Capital maintained their ‘buy’ recommendation on ITV, highlighting that the InfoSum investment, in particular, reflected the “growing importance of data across ITV’s business as a whole – as illustrated by its ITV Hub acceleration strategy and the progress being made in rolling out its new programmatic addressable advertising platform”.
The broker also said the BritBox Australia investment was “consistent with the group’s aspirations to commercialise Britbox in new international markets”.
Shares in ITV were up 0.07% at 61.4p in early deals on Friday.