Global Radio chief predicts steady profits

Global Radio’s chief executive Ashley Tabor has said he expects the radio group to hold its underlying operating profits flat for the 12 months to the end of March, despite a slump in ad revenues.

Tabor said Global, which owns stations including Classic FM and Capital, will report underlying profits of around £31 million despite seeing a 20% downfall in advertising revenues for the same period.

Global’s chief told the Times newspaper that the company is forecasting steady year on year underlying operating profits for the 12 month period, even though the UK radio advertising market has fallen by around 15% to 20% year on year.

However, Global is a privately owned commercial group and will not file full results for its last financial year to Companies House for some time.

Global only filed accounts for the year ending March 2008 last week, which showed that its revenues were up from £193 million to £200.6 million year on year.

The group’s underlying operating profits increased from £13.3 million to £16.1 million on a like-for-like basis, however, the company reported a statutory operating loss of £66.5 million.

Earlier this month, Global kick-started another round of redundancies, which were mainly expected to affect backroom staff at the group’s Xfm and Gold network of stations (see Global Radio starts another round of redundancies).

Global was also forced to make a large number of changes and job cuts across the group last year following its £375 million takeover of GCap Media.