Fairfax half year profit plummets to $26.3m with publisher announcing share buyback
Fairfax Media has reported significant fall in revenues and net profit for the first half of the 2015 financial year, and has signalled it will undertake a share buyback that will see the publisher purchase up to 5 per cent over the next 12 months.
Today the publisher of newspapers including The Age and Sydney Morning Herald recorded a net profit after tax of $26.3m, well down on last year’s half yearly result of $86.4m with the numbers driven down by significant items including $38.3m in restructuring and redundancy charges, and $18.3m in asset impairment charges.
The company’s EBITDA – earning before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation – was down 8.7 per cent at $162.4m, while revenue was down 12.9 per cent to $943.3m from over $1bn a year ago.
In a statement, CEO Greg Hywood trumpeted investments being made in its Domain and events businesses saying: “This result is a solid outcome. It is the result that we had planned for. There are no surprises.
“During the half year we made substantial investments in our growth businesses including Domain and Events, with $25m investment in additional operating expenses introduced into these businesses in the half year.”
Within Fairfax’s Metropolitan Media business revenues and earning remained relatively stable, while figures show Domain remains a major growth centre with a 27.2 per cent increase it revenues to $94.5m while the division’s EBITDA was at $37.8m, up 21.7 per cent.
The company has moved to strengthen its hand in the real estate market by purchasing the remainder of Metro Media Publishing in January, and announcing a new business last week to build on that model nationwide.
Australian Community Media, the group’s regional, community and agriculture assets, was one of the worst performers with total revenue down 7.4 per cent to $256.5m, while EBITA fell 28.1 per cent to $46.9m.
Fairfax Radio assets were down in revenue 1.5 per cent to $53.7m, with earnings down with an $8.8m EBITA ahead of the looming merger with Macquarie Radio.
The Fairfax (FXJ) buyback will see the company buy up to 121m shares, on market, commencing on March 23.
Nic Christensen
Hywood planned for this result. So we can only assume that the business is being liquidated. Next step will be to put some lippy on the Cat’s Domain play, sell it, and buy back more shares. The unknown in these numbers is what happens to metro media when domain goes out. It appears that the smh age and afr are already unprofitable. Once print ads hit the final spiral the costs will be awful.
And they think REA Group and News Ltd are just going to lie down? – They were lucky in Melbourne as the agents were independently owned and family businesses – a real estate model unique to Melbourne. Agents are wise to the tricks of media these days. They know that a few made millions from many and they know that all that glitters is not gold.
LOve how all this is reported.
Will Zillow launch down under? If not why not..?
Oh please….. hedging your bets on Domain??!!!
As Boris mentioned above, REA will squash that effort, as they have done for the past 10 years.
Fairfax in general have been losing good people in droves and those smart enough to jump ship a few years ago are now all stable – I deal with a lot of them to this day.
I smell a liquidation in the eaves!
Not sure how viable the events business will be, the SMH’s Spectrum Now festival appears to be very shoddily managed — complete with a massive typo on the program cover “Be immerse”. Be a mess more like! And whatever happened to the AFR luxury event a few years back? Once only then it disappeared.
The market likes the result as the shares are up on a down day. Obviously Hywood is right with his ‘no surprises’ comment. Also of note is the metro media division’s 4% increase in earnings due to growth in digital subscriptions and Domain. Stan is also reported to have 100,000 subscribers and is ahead of expectations. I’m personally really surprised they managed to get such big numbers, especially so early in Stan’s life.
Such haters
@Bill: If you’d been there when the place had some self-respect you’d understand why people are upset with this bunch. A lot of really talented people have gone and some really good people are trapped in a nightmare. The culture is like News Ltd. Possibly worse nowadays. It’s just about money. Which is why they have no hope of generating anything valuable.
That’s media?
They are a basket case from the top down. Talk about how to spin bullshit you can smell a mile away. Bring back the Lamb family they knew what they were doing. As for Bill do the crossword!!!!
I worked at Fairfax regional for 25 years.
It was poorly managed by bumbling, self-serving managers then, but got away with it because the company held a monopoly in most agricultural and regional markets it operated in. Its only gone from bad to worse with the onset of online news. Put it out of its misery.