Market rewards SCA as audio business outperforms its new TV sibling

Tim Burrowes

February 11, 2026 5:18

Southern Cross Austereo finally had a good day on the Unmade Index with bad news from the TV arm of the company trumped by further progress from the audio part of the business before the two parts merged.

SCA – owner of the Triple M and Hit radio networks along with digital platform Listnr – merged with Seven West Media at the end of the year.

Today’s announcement for SWM covered almost the entire first half of the financial year up to the merger. It was released as part of an ASX update from the Stokes family-controlled conglomerate SGH which now owns 20% of SCA.

In the worst result in its history, SWM saw its profits and revenue fall by 2% and 5% respectively for its final half year as a listed company.

John Kelly delivered a strong result in his final months of running SCA

However SCA also released some early details about the performance of its audio business, ahead of its official announcement which is due the week after next.

It revealed that SCA continued with the cost discipline it had promised the market, delivering an increase in profit for the half of more than 25% while audio revenues grew by 3%. It also paid down its net debt from $67m to $61m.

SCA’s share price improved by 3.8%, beating the wider ASX All Ordinaries which grew by 1.6% today.

Elsewhere in the Index, Ive group also had a good day, improving by 2.9%. With SCA effectively revealing that it had taken audio market share, rival ARN Media lost 2.1%.

The Unmade Index closed on 441.5 points, up 1.44% for the day.

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.