Grupo Televisa, the world's largest Spanish-language broadcaster, has announced that its fourth-quarter profit dropped 58 percent as spending on pay-TV programming increased.

The multimedia conglomerate, earned 1.188 billion pesos ($91 million) in the October-December period, compared to 2.842 billion pesos in the year-earlier quarter.

Televisa fell 1.21 pesos to 48.26 pesos yesterday in Mexico City trading. The shares have dropped 11 percent this year.

Taking measures to boost the supposed slow growth in its broadcast business, Televisa is spending to start up sports and news channels on Latin American cable and satellite systems, and is also buying the broadcasting rights to all of this year's World Cup soccer games on its Sky Mexico satellite network.

The company commented on the decline, saying, "The profit margin in five of Televisa's six divisions narrowed from a year earlier. The only business to increase its margin was programming exports".

According to a Reuter's poll released earlier this week, analysts were looking for quarterly profits of 2.465 billion pesos.

But quarterly revenue rose to 15.163 billion pesos, well exceeding market expectations, as vigorous growth in its cable and satellite services countered a lukewarm performance from its core television broadcasting unit and losses in publishing.