Brutal earnings season drags media stocks ever lower

Tim Burrowes

February 25, 2026 5:24

The Unmade Index’s results season bloodbath continued on Wednesday, with most of Australia’s listed media and marketing companies losing ground.

For the second day in a row, the Unmade Index declined to an all-time low, this time dropping to 406.1 points. The index began four years ago on a nominal 1000 points. This week’s falls take it perilously close to Australia’s media sector having lost 60% of its value in that time. The Unmade Index decline hit 50% in May 2024.

Today’s fall of 1.47% for the Unmade index was in contrast to the wider ASX All Oridnaries which gained 1.24%.

Towards the top end of the market, Ooh Media had the worst of it, losing 6.9% to land on a market capitalisation of $511.8m. Ooh has lost 11% over the last five days and 27% over the last month, and is now trading close to the all-time low it hit at the start of the Covid emergency six years ago.

Also taking a hit today was ARN Media which lost 4.1% in the hours following its full year results announcement. This was despite the number – a fall to a historically low EBITDA profit of $45.7m – having been telegraphed to the market before Christmas.

ARN also told the market it would be suspending paying a dividend to shareholders while it focused on reducing its debt. However, CEO Michael Stephenson hinted during the analysts’ call that successfully selling Hong Kong outdoor business Cody might see a special dividend for shareholders.

The other Unmade Index stock to report today – Ive Group – saw a relatively modest share price decline of 1.4% after reporting revenue falling for the half by 6.2% to $476.5m, but EBITDA profits improved by 1.8% to $75.4m.

The only locally headquartered media company to see its share price grow today was Vinyl Group, which improved by 3.7%

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.