Fairfax Media FY08 Report Highlights - Online Growth is Strong, Print is Diminishing

David Kirk CEO of Fairfax Media presented the FY08 report to the shareholders on Aug 21, 2008. Some of the highlights of this report are :

Revenue up 2.9 %
Diversified Portfolio - Online, Radio Network, Southern Star, NZ Publishing, Australia and Regional Community Publication
Canberra Times' advertising revenue growing strongly
Sydney’s Community publications were affected by lower real estate activity
In all Regional & Community publications revenue is up by 5.5%
Melbourne & Sydney markets are showing a reduction in advertising (newspapers & magazines).
Good growth in magazine revenue

Revenue is down 1.0% in Printing across Australia (17 sites)
Printing in Wagg, Nowra and Warrnambool is closed; Burnie closure is announced this month.
Strong revenue & profit growth in specialist publications.
Business Review Weekly is profitable again
AFR.com seems to be doing well even though it’s a walled garden.

Online revenues up by 33%
Leading player in auctions, motors, real estate classifieds & growing in Employment sections.

Fairfax Digital revenue is up 30%
Investments in, Thevine.com. au, Watoday.com. au, Brisbanetimes.com. au
Fairfax Digital to sell online display advertising for eBay.com.au

Radio network revenue is up by 2.1%
Sydney advertising on the radio is weaker, The Rest of the cities (Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane) are doing well

It's not a surprise that Online is growing rapidly and Print is diminishing. Considering the market forces now it is not a bad result. It will be interesting to see how it goes in the future esp in online consumption of content, as the platform/medium of consumption is changing rapidly. Expanding into NZ has had some success and the US agricultural segment is doing well.

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