Fairfax profits tumble 54% as company flags it will ‘take advantage’ of media consolidation
Fairfax Media brought in revenue of $877.1m in the first half of the 2018 financial year, with a net profit after tax of $38.5m – a 54% drop on the $83.7m it made in the prior corresponding period, its statutory results revealed today.
Chief executive and managing director Greg Hywood was pleased with the results, but said Fairfax will “take advantage” of any media consolidation opportunities and said advisers had been appointed to pursue more strategic opportunities with rival News Corp.
Fairfax remains optimistic
Significant items after tax in the statutory results totalled a $38.7m loss.
On the NZ paper closures, it’s not all doom and gloom:
https://www.flametreemedia.com.au/blogs/survey-finds-small-publishers-confident-but-heres-4-realities-that-will-bite-in-2018
And of the 28 papers going on the sales block, I estimate about a third may survive under new owners.
Stuff’s rural papers, for example, provide excellent niche content.
Unfortunately, as Stuff moves unashamedly to a digital-facing business, print can be drag. That is not to say, though, that print is all over red rover.
It is far too simplistic to just call it game over.
So the Domain ceo exit was actually just a cost saving? Remarkable how rapidly roosters become feather dusters.
Fairfax ceo says the news media are in good shape. Not the ones I’m used to reading. SMH is very rarely on the news and AFR has virtually no business news these days.
All up these businesses look frail. Plus it now appears that Domain is actually dependent on the news brands that are rapidly dying.
Management consultants have fucked Fairfax, and it sounds like they will now work on News LTD. Meanwhile, they’re buying agencies…
All of which prompts again the perennial question, “How much longer can Fairfax stagger on?” One thing’s for sure, if the New York Times and the Washington and Huffington Posts folded, there would be a lot of blank columns in what is left of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Wondering whether fairfax management work in a sealed office. The language Hywood uses in his public statements is so far removed from the evident facts that I reckon it’s like Jonestown.
Hywood and his board clearly think it’s ok to say that the once mighty ness brands are rubbish and performing well. Any person with eyes and a brain knows that neither is remotely true.
As for Domain we now know that the wunderkind ceo who was so well rewarded was not in fact contributing much at all.
The signs are that the whole house of cards is teetering.