SCA, now a pure-play radio and audio broadcaster after selling its TV licences, is seeing improved market sentiment among advertisers.
The broadcaster reported audio revenue pacing well into the second half of the financial year and is expected to be about 6% ahead for the March quarter.
CEO John Kelly says SCA is seeing strong activity from finance, government and pharmaceuticals sectors.
SCA reported revenue up 5.3% to $209.7 million for the half year to December, delivering on its "transformation strategy" and a tight control on costs. Net profit after tax was up 5.5% to $3.2 million.
And the company expects LiSTNR, with more than 2.2 million signed-in and addressable users, to be profitable this financial year and for double digit growth to continue in to the next.
“They are a strong set of results,” Kelly told AdNews.
“And I think our outlook statement is very strong. We fully expect that we're going to have three consecutive good half year results.
“Selling the TV assets makes us all about audio for the first time, and we're delighted about that as well.
“We've guided quite confidently, there'll be at least 6% growth in in audio revenues for the quarter to March.
“And certainly, the pacing we're seeing is positive, you know, across a majority of sectors.”
He said audio had been resilient in a difficult market.
SCA was now harvesting the benefits from transformation work.
"transformation is never complete but the vast majority of the heavy lifting is over and now we're about optimising and tweaking, as opposed to big changes to our model," he said.
"We started a strategy four and a half years ago, which was meant to be a six year strategy, so that we would actually move towards a fully digitised, fully centralised, all about audio model.
"The good news is, all the hard work has been done in terms of spending on capex, centralising, digitalising our model, changing our cost base.
"It's harvest time and that's what we're focusing on the moment, trying to drive as much top line revenue and control our costs."
"We've got 1200 people we're looking after. We want to have jobs, whether they be in Cairns, Hobart, Bunbury or Albany."
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