Scottish Radio Holdings’ (SRH) greater exposure to local advertising revenues has enabled it to outperform the radio market, according to its annual financial results released this morning.
Whilst SRH saw radio turnover remain more or less flat (£34.2 million this year against £34.8 million in 2000) and radio profits dipped from £13.0 million to £11.0 million, this is still an outperformance of the UK radio market, which saw revenues fall by 4.8%. The higher exposure to local advertising – which has been more resistant to the downturn than national – helped bolstered these figures.
The group’s Score Press division saw turnover rise by 37.7% to £28.1 million, whilst profits rose from £5.2 million to £5.6 million.
At the Score Outdoor business, turnover was up 2.5% at £16.7 million, although profits declined from £2.3 million in 2000 to £0.6 million for the year ended 30 September 2001.
Turnover at SRH as a whole grew by 11% to £79.8 million, whilst underlying pre-tax profit fell from £18.6 million to £16.1 million – more or less in line with expectations.
The group also announced today the acquisition of the remaining 76% holding in Today FM owner, Radio Ireland, that it does not already own. SRH is to pay £36.4 million for the stake in Today FM, which provides the only independent national commercial radio service in the Republic of Ireland and began broadcasting in March 1997.
The station became profitable for the year ended February 2000 and has continued to grow in terms of audience listening, advertising revenue and operating profitability, underlining the station’s potential, according to Scottish Radio.
Today FM achieved turnover of IR£7.8 million for the year to 28 February 2001, up by more than 40% on the previous financial year. For the same period operating profits were IR£1.4 million and pre-tax profits were IR£1.1 million.
Commenting on the outlook for the group as a whole, SRH says that despite the significant downturn in advertising in the UK media sector in recent months, SRH revenues have ‘proven to be robust’.
“These results underline the strength of the SRH group. Although there has been a downturn for most of 2001 in levels of advertising revenue generally, SRH’s group revenues have proven to be robust. Our continuing publishing activities have delivered a very strong performance. The group’s strong balance sheet positions SRH well to take advantage of good value acquisition opportunities which are now emerging,” said chairman, Lord Gordon of Strathblane.
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