Fairfax net profit $83m
Fairfax Media has posted an underlying net profit of $83m for the first half of 2012-13.
According to the latest ASX update, the overall company net profit was $386.3m. However, this was boosted by the sale of assets such as the company’s American agricultural assets and the New Zealand auction company Trade Me.
Total revenue was $1.096bn, down 6 per cent from last year while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was $230 million.
The result come as Fairfax prepared to move major newspaper mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to a compact size edition.
Revenue for Fairfax’s metro division was $404m down seven per cent.
Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood said: “We are in the midst of transforming of Metro Media business and there are promising signs in this result. The metro print business continues to be profitable and our circulation strategy is tracking to plan.”
Within the metro division circulation revenue rose 16 per cent – thanks to aggressive cover price increases – to $111m while, advertising revenue fell 20 per cent to $351m.
“Circulation revenue is up strongly and we are maintaining market share while focusing on highly engaged readers,” said Hywood.
Last year Fairfax announced it would introduce paywalls to many of its sites, a move that is expected to happen later this year.
Fairfax’s radio division posted revenue of $55m a result that was up 5 per cent on last year.
The earnings report also shows that Fairfax paid out $69m in redundancy payments this financial year.
Fairfax shares opened 1.8 per cent down this morning falling to 53.5 cents.
Nic Christensen
Hmm. Digital revenue growth well behind all key categories players that reported recently (in fact looks like nil?). Staff costs etc not down much because of Fairfax’s remarkable union deals (looks like almost all the saving is in pages and printing). Those ridiculous offices are costing all up $30m a year. Metro tanking. Big regionals have crashed (interestingly both long standing CEOs are gone). Rural looking very soft. AFR a shocker.
Outlook statement bleak.
Now, tell us again: what’s that digital future?????
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Not sure if I’d term 4.8% growth YOY as nil. Certainly not a great result given previous growth trends, however with IAB online display market only up 1.2%, FFX Metro Digital up 4.8% can’t be considered bad.
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Fairfax websites are about as exciting as cold potatoes so they’ll need to do something there if they expect punters to pay up.
Tabloid size is a positive but how about them hiring some good investigative reporters and going back to what they used to do so well instead of emulating News Ltd?
Sun Herald is borderline tragedy.
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Mr. Pluvius, I am sorry to say your glasses seem not to be working well. There was no mention of a Digital future in the article here. Fairfax has just profited of the back of smart decision making by her leaders to put the business in a position to lead the industry in the next few years. Kudos to them for reducing both short term and long term debt.
I guess we need to just give it to them that they are getting it right.
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@NotJupiter i think the key categories are the ones Seek and carsales etc reported. Double digit top line growth. Fairfax reports these unchanged at 43m for the half. And even total digital revenue is barely up.
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@Oscar, I am hearing you but I am also sensing a passionate heart because of your choice of adjectives but wont be too quick to call Sun Herald a total tragedy, it may not be targeted to you but there is a market for it. My concern though is its pass on rate especially when you remove sport, Travel and News, the remainder of the paper sure needs working on and I know they are are working on it. As per the websites I don’t know where you are getting your stats from because with over 8 million UB averaging 12mins + on those websites per day, I would not call that cold potatoes.
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