Fairfax Media joins News Corp with real estate as bigger profit source than news
Both of Australia’s major publishers now make more of their profits from real estate than they do from their news businesses, new numbers today confirmed.
Today’s numbers to the ASX from Fairfax Media split out real estate brand Domain’s performance from its metro division for the first time.
They show that overall the company made an underlying profit of $132.5m, down 7.6% per cent on the previous year.
Those figures show Domain earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) represented more than half of the profits for the whole company, with the online classified website recording EBIT of $107.3m up from $80.9m last year. The whole company’s EBIT number was $213.2m.
*than news
Hi Arbie,
Thanks for that – we’ve fixed.
Cheers,
Miranda – Mumbrella
Hywood invites two questions. How come Domain masthead revenue can exist in isolation from the masthead operations? How are costs allocated between Domain and Publishing?
3 years later and still no update on Hywoods big strategy;
“we are looking to substantially develop our business – events, content marketing, SME digital and marketing services and data.”
Fairfax AGM 2013.
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/fairfax-boss-greg-hywood-going-get-content-marketing-business-188456
Content Marketing? Right, so teference quality journalism ad nauseous, then get rid of journalists, pay said journalists at freelancers at twice the rate for “content marketing projects” run out of the advertising department, bundle in as much display ads as possible, buy all the bulk of your traffic from outside your network. Pitch for deals that will break even at best but can be spun as a “big win” and hey presto – Content Marketing ‘MADE’ by Fairfax.
After snoring through Mr Smith’s hopelessly unoriginal content marketing presentation at ADMA’s Global Forum this afternoon my guess is your cynicism is well placed – and your description probably pretty close to reality. It bordered on utterly embarrassing. Needless to say, there’s little hope of “content” making a dent in those numbers.
Content had potential – 3 years ago. The usual goings-on at Fairfax – internal politics and horribly inept leadership – has ensured that boat has sailed.
So when a property downturn hits they are in real trouble by putting their reliance upon a second in market website that is utterly dependent upon vendor paid advertising and volume of listings – which they state themselves are down year on year….plus will the spend another $175 million to massage the revenue figures by buying turnover and profit (Allhomes, PDS data and of course the elephant in the room, MMP)?
Very odd that Fairfax keeps declaring victory in strategy while reporting results that say the opposite. Also extremely strange to report segments of business that do not line up with the accounting. Domain clearly not an asset in the real sense but possibly a large blob of lipstick on a seriously sick piglet.
What’s in the “other” category? It’s making a huge loss.