I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Rohan Lund, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Southern Cross Media Limited's results for the 12 months to 30 June 2026. My name is Rohan Lund. I am the MD and CEO of Southern Cross Media Group. Joining me this morning is our Chief Financial Officer, Scott Butterworth. Today, we will give you an update on the full financial results of Southern Cross Media Group, provide an update on the merger of Southern Cross and Seven West Media, and give an update on current trading conditions as well as market outlook. After the presentation, we will take questions from investors and analysts. If I could take you to slide three, which is headed Investment Overview. Southern Cross Media is Australia's leading multi-platform media business. We have unmatched reach, more than 20 million Australians every month.
No other Australian media company connects with more people than us across broadcast, streaming, digital, audio, and publishing. We create the content advertisers trust and audiences choose. We are the number one TV network, number one in audio for people aged 25- 54, and the leading publisher in WA. We offer trusted live and local sport, news, and entertainment, content that resists fragmentation and AI substitution. We also carry strong social trust with initiatives such as the Channel Seven Telethon in Perth and the Good Friday Appeal for the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. No media company contributes more to charitable causes in this country. We have high-impact digital assets. 7plus audiences are up more than 50% and are now Australia's largest and fastest-growing BVOD service. LiSTNR's revenue is now growing faster than audio broadcast revenue is declining, which is a first for us.
The Nightly has about three million readers. Our group digital revenue grew 11% in FY 2026, which we will accelerate this year. The market opportunity is attractive. The Australian digital ad market is worth around AUD 25 billion, and broadcasters are still under-penetrated in it. Advertiser demand for our product is increasing, underpinned by more than 17 million first-party data records. As you will hear more about later, our financial base has been reset. We delivered AUD 30 million in synergies from the Southern Cross and Seven West Media merger earlier than expected. AUD 145 million-AUD 150 million cost out program is underway, and we now have a AUD 569 million refinance bank facility in place. If I can take you to slide five just to talk through key messages. I want to cover three things here. Number one, the business has been reset financially.
Number two, we are building for growth and value. And number three, our strategy is underpinned by culture and trust. First, our results. Revenue was AUD 1.87 billion. EBITDA, including onerous contracts, was AUD 200 million, which was ahead of the revised guidance of AUD 185 million-AUD 190 million that we provided on June 11. We've been resetting the group's cost base to sharpen segment accountability by reducing middle management and lowering corporate overheads. We've consolidated our banking arrangements into a single facility, and we're exiting the majority of our Seven West venture businesses. Together, these steps let us stay focused on our core business.
We've strengthened our business position across TV, audio, and publishing, and we have a clear strategy to create value by investing in trusted live and local content, by building audiences on and off our network, by connecting advertisers with audiences where they are, leveraging the scale of our combined portfolio, and rebasing our culture to increase trust. Take you to slide seven of the presentation. Our financial results reflect difficult trading conditions but disciplined management. Revenue was AUD 1.87 billion, down 4.4%. That reflects a AUD 125 million market contraction, which has been partly offset by AUD 41 million from share growth. Total expenses were AUD 1.678 billion, down AUD 51 million or 3% due to disciplined cost management and the acceleration of the synergy savings, which we were able to deliver earlier than expected.
EBITDA, including onerous contracts, was AUD 200 million, which is down 12.8%. NPAT was AUD 9.9 million, down 58%. This reflects lower operating earnings and AUD 33 million in significant items related to the merger and restructuring. Net debt was AUD 363 million, up 1.6%. We now have a new AUD 569 million cross-group syndicated facility in place, and cash flow available for debt servicing was AUD 41 million. Reported leverage was 1.8 x, up 0.3 x, but mainly reflecting lower earnings. If I can take you to slide seven, business outcomes. Across FY 2026, we held our leading positions in TV, audio, and WA publishing, and we grew share where it matters. In TV, our national audience share grew from 41.2%- 42.5%.
TV ad revenue share grew from 40.4%- 41.6%. 7plus had 16.7 million registered users, up from 15.8 million in FY 2025. We're the number one rated TV network and the fastest-growing BVOD service. In audio, our metro 25- 54 audience share increased from 35.2%- 36.8%. Audio ad revenue share grew from 28.3%- 30%. The number of LiSTNR registered users grew from 2.4 million- 2.7 million. Triple M is the number one for men aged 25- 54. Hit is the number one for women aged 25- 54, and weekly listening is six hours and 27 minutes, up 15 minutes.
In publishing, The West Australian monthly audience grew from 3.2 million- 3.5 million, while The Nightly's digital edition opens increased from 1 million- 1.2 million. The Game Tipping ad revenue grew its registered users 16% to 123,000. Take you to slide eight, combined platform. Our combined platform is powerful, and it's resonating with audiences and advertisers alike. The chart here shows our national cumulative reach by time of day, combining Southern Cross radio and Seven TV. Together, we reach more people across the day than either platform alone, with reach building strongly into the evening. Only 38% of our total audience watches Seven and listens to Southern Cross Audio. Why is this relevant? Here's what our advertisers tell us. 90% are likely to plan campaigns using both Audio and TV in the next six months.
But 25% don't feel confident planning, running, or measuring cross-media campaigns, and 40% feel overwhelmed by the number of platforms available. Right now, only 14% of advertisers buy from both Seven and Southern Cross. That's the opportunity ahead of us. We've already had some early wins. A health insurer ran cross-promotion across Triple M and Seven's AFL properties, an AUD 1.2 million campaign. A direct bank extended its customer outreach with a joint Sunrise and LiSTNR campaign, which was an AUD 1.4 million campaign. Our combined portfolio is delivering high-intent, high-value audiences for advertisers, backed by rich first-party data and digital sales technology. On slide nine, I'll just talk to our strategy. Our strategy is simple. We connect Australians with what matters to them. That means playing to our strengths in appointment viewing. We create moments that capture maximum attention and rituals that keep audiences coming back.
I talk internally about keeping the fire burning and the importance of news, sport, and local in our content for all three businesses. We also talk about turning headwinds into tailwinds, which we see in three steps. We meet our audiences where they are, we meet our advertisers where they are, and we reimagine the way we work to be more efficient in how we do that. Our brands are trusted, live, and local. In television, they're Seven and 7plus. In audio, Hit, LiSTNR, and Triple M. In publishing, it's The West Australian, PerthNow, and The Nightly. All our brands are underpinned by a culture of trust. Slide 10, creating value from strategy. This slide shows how we create value from our strategy, which in part boils down to strengthening Australia through trusted media.
We bring Australians together through content they love and trust, and we turn that connection to audiences that work for advertisers. That happens in five steps. We deliver the content people love, content that's trusted, live, and local: sport, news, and entertainment. We create audiences at scale across metro and regional markets, on and off our networks. First-party insights or knowing who our audiences are and what they want, and advertiser solutions, one sort of audience lead with proven outcomes. Every brief, be it agency or direct, will be answered with our legacy and digital assets. This is underpinned by three things: multi-platform capability and cross-promotion across Seven and 7plus, Hit, Triple M, and LiSTNR, The West Australian and The Nightly, and using our Phoenix trading platforms and our leading data platforms, 7REDiQ .
Our people, culture, and values of do what you say, go together, put your heart into it, and get stuff done, and our financial discipline. On slide 11, I describe the new refreshed team. Since May this year, we've changed our executive leadership team, which now consists of a highly experienced team with strong leaders who have the skills and knowledge to help us achieve our ambition. We've welcomed Angus Ross back to the business. He leads television and streaming. He has 27 years in media behind him. Before this, he was Group Managing Director of Television at Seven. John Kelly does an outstanding job leading audio. John has been in media for 28 years, and he was previously CEO of Southern Cross. Maryna Fewster does an outstanding job leading the publishing business. She brings more than 10 years in media, having joined the group from COO at iiNet.
On the enablement side, we have Rebecca Ackland, our Chief People and Culture Officer, who has eight years in media, all previously in that role at Southern Cross. Stephen Haddad is Chief Technology Officer with 14 years in media and previously COO at Southern Cross. Natalie Harvey, I am excited to say, will be joining us next month as Chief Revenue Officer. Natalie has had a 20-year media career, including senior sales roles at Seven, and joins us from Mamamia, where she was the CEO. Scott Butterworth, sitting next to me, is our CFO with 17 years in finance, most recently as CFO at PEXA. I lead the group as Managing Director and CEO. I had spent 12 years leading media businesses up to a decade ago, and most recently I was the CEO of NRMA before joining Southern Cross Media Group.
I will now hand over to Scott to take you through the financial results in more detail.
Thanks, Rohan. I will now take you through the results in three parts: the group earnings and what moved them, an overview of how each of the three businesses performed, and then separately, the balance sheet, cash flow, and debt position. One note on the basis of presentation before I start. Everything in this section is shown on a pro forma basis, as though SCA and Seven West Media had been combined for the whole of FY 2026 and the whole of FY 2025. The statutory result and the reconciliation between that and the pro forma view are contained in the appendix. I will start with slide 13, which sets out the group result. As Rohan has already noted, FY 2026 was a difficult year for advertising markets, with total TV advertising down 9.9% and total metro audio advertising down 6.8% on fiscal 2025.
Given this backdrop, group revenue was AUD 1.87 billion, down 4.4% on fiscal 2025. This largely reflects the tough markets in TV and Audio advertising, particularly in the legacy segments, partly offset by share gains and supported by digital revenue growth. Revenue-related expenses fell by 5%. That is slightly faster than the 4.8% decline in advertising revenue, mainly reflecting tight commission management in the TV segment. Operating costs fell by 2.6%, helped by merger synergies, general spend control, and commercial broadcasting tax relief. Reflecting the impact of subdued market conditions on our operating leverage, EBITDA before the onerous contract provision release was AUD 191.9 million, down 15.8% at a margin of 10.3%. Including the positive impact of onerous provision releases, EBITDA was AUD 200 million. Below EBITDA, three items are worth calling out. Depreciation and amortization expense rose AUD 15.7 million- AUD 88.3 million.
About AUD 24 million of the movement is due to the resetting of asset values upon the acquisition of SWM by SCA. This was partly offset by changes to the estimated useful life of the LiSTNR assets and lower CapEx. Notwithstanding these dynamics, we expect D&A to trend down in FY 2027 as the effects of acquisition accounting wash through. The effective tax rate fell from 26.7% in FY 2025 to 22.6% in FY 2026. This is primarily due to the impact of Home and Away-related producer offset rebates recognized during the year. Significant items of AUD 32.9 million after tax were down by about 1/3 on the prior year. The prior year included investment revaluations. This year, the main items relate to merger transaction fees and restructuring costs.
The overall effect of these movements is that NPAT for the year was AUD 9.9 million, compared to AUD 23.3 million in the prior year. I will turn now to slide 14 to explain the revenue movements for the year. This chart is the whole revenue story on one page. We started the year at AUD 1.956 billion and finished at AUD 1.87 billion. I will take you through the major movements. Declines in the advertising market took about AUD 125 million out of the top line, AUD 116 million of that in television, where the market was down 9.9%, with the balance across audio, where the metro market was down 6.8%. Publishing was also impacted by the soft conditions. Overall, the market outcome reflects economic weakness and the runoff in prior year federal election activity.
Against that, share growth gave us back AUD 41 million. Total TV revenue share was up 1.2 percentage points to 41.6%, driven by our strong ratings performance in sport, morning news, and our tentpole programs. Metro audio revenue share was up 1.7 percentage points to 30%, reflecting ongoing improvements to our programming mix and talent roster. Underneath all of this, digital revenue grew 10.7% to AUD 320.3 million. That growth is what is progressively changing the shape of our top line. I will turn now to a discussion of operating expenses on slide 15. Group operating costs came down 2.6% to AUD 1.423 billion. Two things pulled costs down and two pushed them up. First down, cost improvements. Merger synergies delivered AUD 22 million in the year.
The full AUD 30 million annualized benefit is now in place, a year ahead of the schedule we set at the time of the merger. Separately, other cost actions delivered AUD 50 million, driven by content cost reductions, removing duplication, and operating model changes. Second, we also benefited by AUD 15 million relative to fiscal 2025, due to relief from commercial broadcasting tax payments. Working the other way, contracted cost growth added AUD 21 million. Most of that is due to a step-up in AFL fees, with the growth in future payments to be in line with inflation. Lastly, AUD 30 million of cost increases was due to the impacts of inflation on personnel, content, and other operating costs.
Given these dynamics in the cost base, our ongoing expense reduction work remains of significant importance to the company, and I want to say more about that as I turn to slide 16. Our cost reduction program redesigns the group around three businesses with clearer accountabilities, with less middle management and corporate overhead, using group-wide scale and procurement, and to remove duplication, and redesigning the work itself through process change, automation, and the like. It will be substantially delivered by the end of fiscal 2027, and progress to date is in line with our expectations. Around 250 people, roughly 8% of the workforce, left the business during FY 2026, and we are already making headway with important non-labor savings in areas such as content and corporate costs such as insurance.
As previously announced, we expect the program, when complete, to deliver AUD 145 million- AUD 150 million of annualized savings. That figure includes the AUD 30 million of merger synergies already delivered. I will turn now to slide 17 to summarize the performance of our three operating businesses. If you want further information, you will be able to find it in the appendix to these slides. Television suffered the most from the decline in the market during the year. However, while the market was down 9.9%, TV's revenue decline was restricted to 6.6%, reflecting a record 42.5% audience share in a non-Olympics year, and revenue share up 1.2 percentage points to 41.6%.
Additional support was provided to the revenue line by digital, which grew at 10.6%. Pleasingly, 7plus became Australia's fastest-growing BVOD service during the year, reflecting a full-year benefit of AFL programming on the platform. Partly offsetting the revenue decline was strong expense management, with revenue-related costs down 8.4% and operating costs coming in 2.2% lower. Audio had a very strong year, notwithstanding the metro advertising market being down 6.8%. Overall revenue was up 1.9%, with metro share up 1.7 percentage points and local revenue growing 3.2%, albeit the national regional segment did decline sharply as national advertisers pulled back on spend in the regions. The number I draw your attention to is digital. Audio digital revenue grew 14.3%, and for the first time, its growth has more than offset the decline in broadcast. That crossover is the thing we have been building LiSTNR for.
From an expense point of view, revenue-related expenses grew, representing increased ad sales and revised contract arrangements. Good operating expense discipline continued as the business drove a wide range of labor and discretionary expense reduction initiatives. Publishing EBITDA was held to a decline of 2.4% despite soft conditions. Revenue of AUD 187 million was down 3.1% due to lower advertising, with circulation and subscription revenue held flat. Included in the revenue line are digital revenues, which increased 5.7% to AUD 27.9 million. Operating costs were down 3.2% through efficiency initiatives targeting personnel and printing costs. I will turn now to cash and debt. Moving to slide 19, cash generation was down this year, with several reasons for this movement. First, cash flow available for debt servicing fell to AUD 41 million, against AUD 86.8 million last year.
This was due to lower EBITDA and a cash conversion ratio of 71%, which was down from 85% in FY 2025. That decline partly reflected non-cash items such as the onerous contract provision release included in the reported EBITDA number. Working capital usage was also higher than in the previous year's period, with most of the increase representing the unwind of leave provisions as people left the business. Partly offsetting this, CapEx fell 22.5% due to the runoff in prior year property and technology projects. Lease payments also fell 11.3% as we compressed property usage. Second, whilst financing costs were down in the year because of lower interest rates, we did incur AUD 22 million of merger-related transaction fees. SCA also paid a dividend during the first half of 2026, but this was largely offset by the effect of the sale of ventures assets by SWM.
Overall, the cash movement, excluding debt drawdowns, was AUD -5.7 million during the year, and net debt finished at AUD 362.8 million. Given the year we've had, a merger completed, a restructuring underway, and AUD 22 million of transaction costs paid, holding net debt broadly flat represents a not unreasonable outcome, albeit one that we are keen to turn around. Let me now turn to slide 20, which provides information on the group's debt structure. Group ended the year at a reported leverage of 1.8 x and interest cover at 7.1 x. Both movements relative to FY 2025 are earnings-driven rather than debt-driven. More important development on this page is the refinancing. We've replaced the separate SCA and Seven West Media facilities with a single group-wide syndicated facility of AUD 569 million, arranged by ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, and Westpac.
Doing that, we reduced total syndicated commitments by AUD 116 million and increased short-term facilities by AUD 15 million- AUD 60 million. We've taken cost out while improving day-to-day flexibility. The facility is split across three and four-year tranches. Existing FY 2028 maturities have been pushed out, and there are now no syndicated maturities until the end of July 2029. Covenants are unchanged from previous Seven West Media facilities. Net leverage below 3.25 x and interest cover above 3x . At 1.8x and 7.1 x, we have good headroom against both. That completes the financial section. Fiscal 2026 was defined by market declines in legacy channels, partly offset by share gains in digital growth and cost discipline. That sets the frame for FY 2027. I'll now hand back to Rohan to review our priorities for next year and to summarize the outlook.
Thanks, Scott. I'll now talk through the FY 2027 priorities, and I'll provide a trading update. We have five clear priorities for FY 2027, and they're completely in line with the strategy I described earlier. The first is playing to our strengths in trusted, live, and local content. Second, we want to meet our audiences where they are. We want to maintain and build on the gains we made in FY 2026 and push our engagement further, off-platform into different formats and across brands. Thirdly, for our advertisers, we're embedding our total TV and total audio propositions with digital at the core and building on our digital publishing offers, turning our first-party data into a real product and converting advertisers who work with just one of our platforms today into multi-platform partners.
T his also means capturing the full value of our content from platforms that take advantage of it without appropriate compensation. Fourth is reimagining our ways of working. That means delivering on the AUD 150 million cost reduction program we've already set out and changing the way we work across all of our businesses so we can be leaner and more agile. And fifth, reputation and engagement. We're focused on building trust with our audiences, with our advertisers, our people, and our partners, and strengthening a culture built around shared values and working together as one business. I can take you to slide 23, which is the trading and outlook. Television revenue is tracking roughly flat year on year, and pleasingly, July is slightly up, which is a positive way to enter the year.
The market itself, we understand, is down mid-single digits, but we've been offsetting that with stronger share gains again, and with help from a very successful Commonwealth Games. Audio revenue in the first quarter is tracking up low- single digits, and publishing revenue is also holding steady year-on-year. It's been a very strong start in July. More broadly, the advertising market is still short and volatile, and sentiment amongst consumers and advertisers is mixed. On cost, the program is on track. We expect total operating expenses to grow below inflation, and our cost-out actions are tracking to plan for delivery in FY 2027. We're expecting some one-off costs from major sport events this year, and that is recently concluded Glasgow Commonwealth Games and the Rugby League World Cup in October and November.
The full benefit of the cost out program will flow through in FY 2028. Trust comes from doing what you say you'll do and consistently delivering. We intend to earn your trust this year. That concludes the presentation. Thank you for joining us this morning. We are now very happy to take any questions from investors and analysts.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Annie Zhu with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Rohan and Scott. Thanks for taking my question. I just have three, if that's okay. Firstly, on the TV segment. The dollar margin declined year-on-year from about 12% in the PCP to 9% this year, despite having those benefits from the cost-out program. Can you just talk through that? Also just looking forward, can we expect margins to improve with the further cost-out benefits? That's my first question.
Thanks, Annie, and thanks for your question. Maybe, Rohan, if I provide a few perspectives to that. The margin contraction this year is reflective of the operating leverage in the TV business. Put simply, the cost reductions that we were able to push through the business weren't able to outrun the effect of operating leverage on the margins. In relation to next year, I don't want to provide forecasts about each of the businesses, and that's largely because the revenue, as Rohan was saying, is actually quite short and volatile in the advertising market at the moment. So it's difficult for me to provide a perspective on how that will play out over the full fiscal year. In relation to costs, at an overall level for the group, we expect cost inflation to be well below the general level of inflation in the economy.
A large amount of those cost reductions which are underpinning that position come through TV because that's the largest part of our cost base.
Thanks very much. I was just going to ask on digital as well. Digital revenue growth was quite strong, double digit for both TV and audio, and understand ad markets are uncertain, as you mentioned, but are you able to talk in broad terms about the outlook for digital and whether that's expected to accelerate vs the FY 2026 performance?
Yes, Annie, it's Rohan here. My aim is to accelerate digital through this year. Certainly, with the type of content that we're pushing through the platforms on the TV side, but also with the growth in LiSTNR and what we're seeing in publishing. I feel at the moment that we're certainly seeing much stronger audiences coming through our platforms. I mentioned that the 7plus asset was the fastest-growing BVOD last year, but we're seeing that continue to pick up at the moment. Like you indicated, it's a pretty big digital prize out there. It's a AUD 25 billion digital market, and at the moment, we're not even scratching that. But we've got the largest BVOD service in the market. We've got this fantastic platform with LiSTNR and some fantastic digital publishing platforms that are all growing ahead of market. So we think the opportunity is very real.
Okay, got it. On the 250 FTE departing, are you able to roughly quantify the benefit from this or give some color on how significant it is as part of the incremental AUD 115 million-AUD 120 million of the cost out program that is left? Is there any further departures expected for FY 2027? Just noting that back in June, you called out 250- 300.
Scott will take the first on the numbers, and I will make a comment about going forward.
Thanks, Annie. 250 folks have already left the business, and they left by the end of 30 June. So they are encapsulated in the run rate, AUD 145 million- AUD 150 million of savings. Not all of the savings, though, are to do with labor costs. There is a reasonable portion of that to do with content purchasing efficiency. Then also some efficiencies in our corporate use of non-labor costs, largely through better procurement scale. So there is still personnel costs, which Rohan will talk about in a moment, but as we go through the course of this year, a lot of our focus is actually on driving efficiencies in the non-labor line as well.
Annie, I called out quite deliberately that one of my priorities and really a part of the strategy for the group is reimagining the way we work. We know we have to be more efficient in delivering the audiences and delivering for advertisers. Like all businesses, we will continue to focus on costs. That will mean looking at middle management, looking at corporate costs, looking across the group, that if there is a better way to do something, we will find it. It is a major focus across everything we are doing in the group, and we certainly do not see the cost-out program as the end of our efforts in terms of looking at our cost base.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Ailsa Lei with UBS. Please go ahead.
Morning, Rohan, and morning, Scott. I've got two questions. Firstly, as you think about FY 2027, are there any revenue stream adjacent to advertising where you could win? I guess you spoke to first-party data today. Can you leverage some of that to create maybe a recurring revenue stream less correlated with the ad cycle?
It's a terrific question. Yeah. I think we've actually got a job to do just to capture more of the opportunity that we haven't been so far on the advertising front. I think as we bring our first-party data to the table and productize it in a way that's easy for our salespeople and the market, there's an opportunity there for us to capture more than what we have to date on the advertising side. But I tend to agree with you. With the size of the audiences that we have and the first-party data that we possess, it's a unique position to look at other revenue sources. But right now, I'm very focused in the business on just executing what's in front of us because I think there's a real opportunity there.
Yeah. Understood. My second question is, if you could please walk us through the puts and takes on cost into next year, which areas are you more comfortable with controlling vs which ones do you maybe see potentially more headwinds?
Thanks, Ailsa. Scott here, just to take your question. I think in terms of tailwinds for this fiscal year, obviously, we will get the benefit of the folks who have already left the business and the other cost reductions that we pushed through in fiscal 2026. There is the other cost reduction programs which are due to deliver this year as part of the AUD 145 million-AUD 150 million exercise. That is progressing as we expected it to do. In the way of these things, some areas over-deliver, some areas under-deliver, but net-net, it is where we expect it to be. That is all positive. I think in areas of headwinds, albeit they are known headwinds, there is just the general level of inflation in the economy that impacts a range of our non-labor costs and also labor costs for those folks who are on EBA arrangements.
Outside of that, most of the cost movements I think are relatively well understood, and I think we feel, that is why we would not have put it out otherwise, we feel confident in saying that costs will grow below the level of inflation in the economy. So in real terms, a cost reduction.
We have been very focused on what our cost run rate looks like coming into FY 2028. There is still a hangover in some of the content agreements that we are just washing through at the moment, but certainly everything we are focused on is resetting this cost base so that by FY 2028, we are starting to have the shape of the organization that we think it should be.
Yep. Understood. Thank you both.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.