Fairfax NZ moves back to black

Fairfax New Zealand, which trades under the Stuff moniker, was back in black in 2017.

This came after the cost of laying off staff tumbled by 80 per cent and as a $100 millionplus impairment charge on the value of its newspaper mastheads and buildings a year earlier wasn’t repeated.

The Wellington-based media organisation reported a profit attributable to ASXlisted parent Fairfax Media Group of $18.2m in the 12 months ended June 30, turning from a restated loss of $56.1m a year earlier.

That was when the publisher of the Dominion Post, Sunday Star-Times, The Press and stuff.co.nz website wrote $66.8m off the value of its mastheads, $26.3m from buildings, plant and equipment, and $4.7m from software and websites.

Fairfax’s local unit has been trying new strategies to arrest the decline in its sales, which shrank 6.1 per cent to $333.7m in the latest year.

That’s seen it adopt a digitalfirst strategy, and mount an unsuccessful attempt to merge with rival NZME.

The newspaper publisher is now reducing its footprint across the country, scaling down to a tabloid-format for its daily broadsheets, and reducing print runs for some provincial newspapers.

Restructuring costs fell to $3.8m in the latest financial year from $19.3m a year earlier.

As at June 30, Fairfax NZ had redundancy provisions of $1.3m, down from $3.2m a year earlier.

The latest accounts show Fairfax NZ paid $4.1m in cash to lift its stake in the hyperlocal Neighbourly website to 70 per cent from 45 per cent.

The local unit has also branched out into complementary businesses, taking a controlling stake in NZ Fibre Communications, known as Stuff Fibre, and a minority stake in electricity provider Future Energy New Zealand, creating the ability to package content, telecommunications, and energy.