Fairfax shareholders approve Domain split as Hywood flags further cost cuts
Fairfax shareholders have approved the spin off and partial listing of its Domain real estate operation at a special meeting before the company’s annual general meeting this morning.
The motion to split the company passed with a vote of 99.89% with no questions from the assembled shareholders.
“Cost discipline” will continue in 2018 warns Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood
During his AGM address, Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood stated ‘cost discipline’ will continue both in the company’s metro division and the New Zealand operations as the company continues to deal with declining markets outside the Domain business.
The Australian operation saw cost cuts of 12% during last financial year which contributed to a bottom line improvement of 26%, said Hywood.
Hywood hailed the Macquarie Radio acquisition as a ‘profound success’ with EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] growth of 28% over the past year. He also flagged Stan’s 800,000 subscribers as another win for the company with the exclusive rights to CBS’ Showtime content a key asset for the streaming service.
Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon commended the CEO’s management of Fairfax telling shareholders: “Reshaping Fairfax from a traditional media company to a leader in the contemporary media environment is testament to the astute leadership of Greg Hywood.”
Looks like more rounds of redundancies incoming *ahem* I mean “cost discipline.” Watch out Publishing Innovation… you’ve done what you were required to do. You’ve been chewed up and now it’s time to be spat out just like others were earlier in the year. You’ve been warned! :O
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More “cost discipline” (aka job cuts) coming ? Didn’t Hywood say when announcing the last round of 130 redundancies just a few months ago, that they would be the last?
http://www.theaustralian.com.a.....83e1e19bd3
Either he was being disingenous when he said this (the polite term), or the economics of the Metro/NZ businesses have deteriorated even further since then and the only way to maintain some semblance of profitability is to do what he’s always done: cut yet more costs. The new management team he installed at Metro were bought on with the stated promise of driving innovation, revenue and profitable, sustainable journalism. If we’re already talking about yet more job cuts – just a few months after the last round – then all this innovation and revenue growth has clearly yet to kick in. With Domain now being split out , there is now nowhere for the Metro business to hide.
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How ironic that the person who has arguably been the most Instrumental in terms of restructuring/transforming Fairfax’s editorial operations and cost base (and thus in restructuring/transforming the cost base of the whole company) has himself just been restructured/transformed out of the business. I refer to Sean Aylmer. And not a word of thanks from Hywood on his departure after 20 years despite being the driver of much of the transformation that Hywood so loves to boast about.
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Yep. They should have put Aylmer in charge and gotten out of the way. Best brain in the place.
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Hywood was always pretty loose with syntax. But the idea that the mastheads are in great shape is, plainly, stupid.
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It’s horrifying the way Sean Aylmer has been ignored. To have an email from Chris Janz – who ran popsugar and Huffington Post and the newsroom doesn’t take seriously – was disrespectful.
And no one knows why he has gone.
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Yes , quite. Pop sugar and huff post australia – those editorial and commercial success stories. Not.
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@Lousy and @Anonymous are both spot on. Aylmer was good and respected. Allure and HuffPo not commercial success stories and current ‘leadership’ team is woefully inexperienced running anything larger than an SME.
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