KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 30): Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd expects its home shopping joint venture (JV) to generate RM500 million in annual revenue by 2019.

Pay-TV provider Astro (fundamental: 1.1, valuation: 2.1) has set up the JV with South Korean multimedia retailer GS Home Shopping Inc. The JV scheme is known as Go Shop.

Go Shop, available on Astro's channel 118, will leverage Astro's penetration of 4.3 million households with about 17 million potential customers.

Astro chief executive officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan said since the soft launch of Go Shop last November, the scheme had garnered 72,000 customers and sold more than 115,000 products.

Rohana was speaking to reporters today at the official launch of Go Shop. Looking ahead, she said Go Shop expected to secure 800 new customers daily.

At 12:30pm, Astro shares rose one sen or 0.3% to RM2.95 for a market capitalisation of RM15.35 billion.

The stock had fallen 3% this year, underperforming the FBM KLCI's 1% advance.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)