SCA's recovery from the pandemic is pushing ahead despite the current lockdowns, says CEO Grant Blackley who also notes the increasing importance of the Broadcaster's LiSTNR app.
The radio network reported a 91.6% increase in net profit after tax to $48.1 million for the year to June. Revenue for the 12 months was down 2.2% to $529.1 million. However cost cutting shaved expenses by $29.4 million to $403.2 million.
“We’re delighted with the performance, the results underpin a lot of hard work that the board and management have lent into over the last 12 months,” Blackley tells AdNews.
“It clearly demonstrates there has been a strong recovery in the advertising markets from where we were over 12 months ago.
"Most importantly, what we're seeing is a very strong balance sheet, very positive momentum moving forward and the resumption of dividends for our shareholders which I'm sure will be welcomed.”
Blackley says that the current lockdowns in place across Australia have had much more of a limited impact on advertising revenue as agencies and marketers take a more “measured and considered” approach.
The network says July and August revenues will be up 20% - a sign that the recoviering is continuing.
“We are finding that about nine in 10 of the major categories are all in double digit growth, which is very pleasing,” Blackley says.
“The one that's not in double digit growth is retail, which is not surprising given some of the lockdowns and the inability of consumers to consume as much with that in that retail.
“About 6% of our revenue comes from what we call restricted categories and those restricted categories are where the government naturally restricts people; theaters, live events, sporting events, and international travel.
"While it only represents 6% that is obviously at the very early stages of recovery - and it is recovering, particularly domestic tourism which has far outstripped what we've seen before.
"However, we'd like to see a level of normality come back to those markets and hopefully we will see that coming into the second half of our fiscal year.”
SCA launched its free audio app LiSTNR in February this year. The app has helped drive digital advertising revenue which was up 40% to $15.4 million.
“[LiSTNR] embodies everything that we want to be as a company, which is leaning into a large and emerging marketplace of digital audio; on-demand and streaming,” Blackley says.
“It’s extremely important, we celebrated our six month birthday yesterday for LiSTNR, the technology stack in its own right is operating in accordance with our plans and targets. We'll continually improve that particularly through AI recommendations and further employment of different data insights and tools to actually improve the consumer experience that has become less of a concern and more of a given.
“And now we're moving into a second phase, which is effectively even more premium content and, some of that exclusive, for LiSTNR.
"Combined with that is customer acquisition through our marketing platform and finally the monetisation of that and we've confirmed today that our digital revenues grew by 40% last year, and we expect that they will grow by 75-100% over the next 12 months so it’s starting to become very meaningful contribution to our earnings, which is very pleasing.”
The network also revealed it had reached a provisional agreement with Google for payment for its news content. While the network hasn’t been able to reveal the value or length of the deal, Blackley says part of it will go towards hiring more journalists at the network.
“Ultimately, we're employing different capabilities and that’s a natural evolution in the media market,” he says.
“We're employing more people with capabilities from digital publishing, news gathering and curation than what we may have seen in our traditional radio world.
“You shouldn’t think of this as more people, but potentially more people with different capabilities that actually serve our needs for the future.”
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