Nine Entertainment has announced a 6.4 per cent dip in its profits to December 2014 blaming a tightening ad market. It announced an $88.8 million profit, while overall revenues fell 1.9 per cent to $829 million.
CEO, David Gyngell, put a positive spin on the results saying, “In what has been a difficult advertising market Nine Entertainment has reported a solid result”.
Gyngell said Nine had increased its overall share of the metropolitan free-to-air TV advertising revenue from 38.7 to 39.2 per cent. And this came when the market contracted three per cent in the six months to December 2014.
He said the company had ambitious plans to take 40 per cent of ad revenues over the coming 12 months. This, he said, would be done through the launch of new programs and acquisitions. Gyngell cited Stan – Nine’s JV with Fairfax Media – as an example of where new monies would come from.
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs agreed Nine’s coming 12 months looked rosy for ad revenues as it had the rights to the current Cricket World Cup, coming Ashes series and the Rugby World Cup. The spokesperson also predicted better ad revenues all-round for the first six months of 2015.