Fairfax posts $16.4m loss and gives first look at paywall takeup
Fairfax Media has this morning posted a $16.4m loss on the back further writedowns and its staff redundancy program.
Overall company revenue fell 8.2 per cent to $2.034bn, while the EBIDTA profit – earnings before interest, depreciation, taxation and amortisation – was between $359m and $365m.
The company this year recorded a further $444m in write downs from its regional, printing and agricultural business. The result is still a marked improvement on last year’s results which saw the company report a loss of $2.7bn, after write downs.
Fairfax also said that it now has 68,000 paid digital subscribers. It started paywalls for smh.com.au and theage.com.au on July 2.
“This figure is higher than the 50,000 new subscribers rival News Corp confirmed across its tabloid mastheads late last month.”
Links to
“News Corp marks 100,000 digital subscriptions”
Was this done by a monkey on a typewriter?
Hi Encyclic,
As you’ll see from the 100,000 digital subscribers story. Half those subscribers were preexisting subscribers to The Australian’s ‘freeium’ paywall.
The story above makes the comparison above is between the 50,000 news+ subscribers to News’s metered paywall (which launched in May and June) and Fairfax’s metered paywall.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
not sure it’s an improvement in real terms – F12 result was crushed by impairment charges of 2.8b. Remove those and re-run the numbers.
If you compare trading performance from continuing businesses the results are worse. If you look at the actual circulation revenue nearly all appears to have come from either price increases in print (either direct or through cutting discounts etc). Ad revenues are not supporting the audience claims and in metros and AFR the year’s ad revenue outcome is tragic.
All up, it looks like they are getting there on cost cuts alone but the business is dying at what might be a faster rate than last year.
Fairfax would surely have to be happy with those digital subscriber numbers, especially seeing as though the paywall was only launched recently. The fact that they already have more digital subscribers than News Plus, despite launching somewhat later, and with far less spent on advertising than News Plus (News ads are everywhere), I believe says something about the sort of digital content people are willing to pay for. Fairfax journalism translates well to a digital audience, whereas I don’t think you can say the same thing for tabloid-style journalism.
Well thank God they’ve got an old print guy from rural press in charge of the digital business! Brian McCarthy must be proud.
I’m surprised Fairfax have that many subscribers as their websites are just plain dull and uninspiring. I can;t see why they just cannot get it right. We need Fairfax to survive and prosper but teh future looks bleak.
Another big loss for Fairfax and they still haven’t purged their papers of the leftist crap which caused this crisis. Perhaps they should change their name from Fairfax Media to Ostrich Media.
I suppose Hoin prefers to read Fascist Media then.
Forgot to mention that subscriber numbers are only part of the picture. Price is what gives you revenue and from the data it appears the digital pricing is negligible. I suspect the same is true for News.
All of these guys are praying for an ad cycle upswing and simply ain’t going to get one. Certainly not in time to avoid cost cuts that, by the look of current patterns, will have tuened their once must-read products into chaff.
Why has Greg Hywood put in a print guy from rural press to head up the business? Sales are screaming
I think there were offerng $1 for the first month
Subscriptions were a Greg Hywood/Jack Matthews initiative.
They weren’t a bad combo ya know. Why they have now gone back to rural press approach who knows.
But I bet a book will be commissioned about it.
Hywood and Matthews were forced into paid content by the debacle of their traffic strategy. The Rural Press guys are focused on profit and it shows. No one is focused on the product anD tHat shows too.
These subscriber numbers relate to the first month worth of subscriptions, where the first month is $1, while the second and subsequent months are around $20. How many of these subscribers will drop off when $20 or so is billed to their credit card?