In its unau­dit­ed re­sults for the three months end­ed March 31, 2021 Guardian Me­dia Ltd suf­fered a re­duc­tion in rev­enue of $5.9 mil­lion or 21 per cent and al­so record­ed a loss be­fore tax­a­tion of $2.2 mil­lion.

Chair­man Pe­ter Clarke said rev­enues for the three months were $22.4 mil­lion.

“Year-over-year de­cline in rev­enue per­for­mance was due to con­tin­ued im­pact of COVID-19 and re­sult­ing can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val,” Clarke said.

He said the loss be­fore tax­a­tion of $2.2 mil­lion was in­curred ver­sus a $1.9 mil­lion prof­it in the pri­or year, adding that ex­pens­es fell by sev­en per cent year over year.

How­ev­er, Clarke said the com­pa­ny main­tained strong cap­i­tal lev­els and healthy bal­ance sheet met­rics.

Not­ing that COVID re­mained a great con­cern, both lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly, Clarke as­sured, “As the Gov­ern­ment and our cit­i­zen­ry weath­er this sit­u­a­tion, Guardian Me­dia will con­tin­ue to be a strong part­ner in serv­ing our com­mu­ni­ties and keep­ing peo­ple in­formed.

“We have all nec­es­sary mea­sures in place to keep our es­sen­tial mul­ti­me­dia op­er­a­tions run­ning with­out in­ter­rup­tion, whilst pro­tect­ing the health and safe­ty of our em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers. De­spite the chal­lenges faced in first quar­ter from COVID-19, we con­tin­ued with our fo­cus on strength­en­ing our com­mer­cial struc­ture, fur­ther re­duc­ing con­tent through in­tro­duc­tion of new in­no­v­a­tive vir­tu­al me­dia so­lu­tions,” Clarke added.

He said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to man­age its cap­i­tal with the pru­dence that the cur­rent cri­sis re­quires.

“Con­sid­er­ing the con­cern­ing spike in Coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions lo­cal­ly and re­cent­ly im­posed ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions, we will con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence fur­ther rev­enue chal­lenges in­to the sec­ond quar­ter,” Clarke said.

He added that while the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment seems un­cer­tain and the path to nor­mal­i­ty pro­longed, he is con­fi­dent that the com­pa­ny can make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion in this cri­sis, thanks to its loy­al au­di­ences, wide mul­ti-me­dia reach, close client re­la­tion­ships and cap­i­tal strength.

Clarke al­so thanked the Guardian Me­dia team for ris­ing to meet these chal­lenges while ad­just­ing to al­tered work and per­son­al rou­tines to en­sure that we move quick­ly and care­ful­ly to ad­dress the rapid­ly evolv­ing eco­nom­ic and so­cial cir­cum­stances.

“We again wish to thank our cus­tomers, au­di­ences, ad­ver­tis­ing part­ners and share­hold­ers for their loy­al­ty and con­tin­u­ing sup­port dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2021,” Clarke added.