Nine Entertainment reported a loss of nearly $330 million in one-offs charges (most were announced earlier in the year), the largest being a write-down on its television broadcast licences and provision to exit its Warner Bros contract.
At the bottom line Nine reported a $203.4 million loss for the 12 months to June 30, compared with a $33.2 million profit in the year to June 2016.
Total dividend for the year was cut 20% to 9.5 cents a share from 12 a year ago. That was due to the cut in the interim from 8 to 4.5 cents. The final of 5 cents a share is up one cent on a year ago.
Most of the loss, revealed at its half-year results in February, was a $260 million write-down on the carrying value of its TV broadcast licence and a $85.7 million provision to exit its life of production contract with US studio Warner Bros. Payments to end that contract will continue over 2018 and into 2019.
Excluding one-offs, the free-to-air broadcaster reported a profit of $123.6 million, compared with $120.3 million in the prior year. Revenue fell 3% to $1.24 billion.
The higher profit was driven mostly by a 1% in overall costs, while free-to-air costs formed the bulk of that being down 2%. Including the impact of licence fee relief fro the Federal Government, costs were down nearly 6%.
“The strategic work we did over the past 18 months to reshape our content offering has delivered outstanding results that will benefit our entire business in the mid-term,” Nine chief executive Hugh Marks said in the statement.
Nine, the home of The Voice and Married at First Sight, is forecasting earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the 2017-18 year to come in at the top end of analyst forecast ranges of between $186 million and $207 million, subject to licence fee relief being made permanent and market conditions.
At that level earnings would be roughly unchanged from 2016-17.
Nine said it expects the free-to-air advertising market to drop by 1% to 2% over the year (a touch better than the 2.7% fall was in 2016-17).
