Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed has re­port­ed a prof­it be­fore tax of $6.5 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021.

“This is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year in which Guardian Me­dia Ltd has achieved prof­itabil­i­ty fol­low­ing three suc­ces­sive years of loss­es (2017-2019),” GML’s chair­man Pe­ter Clarke stat­ed.

“De­spite sig­nif­i­cant un­cer­tain­ty in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, we re­main com­mit­ted to en­hanc­ing share­hold­er val­ue whilst ex­er­cis­ing ap­pro­pri­ate stew­ard­ship over the com­pa­ny’s re­sources and re­in­force our view that the fu­ture con­tin­ues to be promis­ing,” Clarke stat­ed.

And based on this, Clarke said the GML board has ap­proved a fi­nal or­di­nary div­i­dend of sev­en cents per share.

In 2020, the fi­nal or­di­nary div­i­dend was five cents.

Pref­er­ence share­hold­ers will re­ceive a fi­nal div­i­dend of three per cent.

These div­i­dends will be paid on June 15.

Clarke said the chal­lenges pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ued un­abat­ed for the ma­jor­i­ty of last year.

“Shrink­ing ad­ver­tis­ing bud­gets and dig­i­tal mar­ket dis­rup­tions, all com­bined to en­sure that 2021 was once again an ex­ceed­ing­ly chal­leng­ing year,” he said.

The gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to keep the busi­ness sec­tor open de­spite ris­ing in­fec­tion lev­els and death rates, how­ev­er, brought about re­newed hope and op­ti­mism with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and in­creased ad­ver­tis­ing spend, es­pe­cial­ly in the lead up to the Di­vali and Christ­mas sea­sons, Clarke added.

“This was a key con­tribut­ing fac­tor in Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed’s re­ver­sal of the year to date Q3 loss be­fore tax of $5 mil­lion, and the de­liv­ery of its full year re­sult,” Clarke stat­ed.

“In sim­i­lar fash­ion to 2020, the fi­nal quar­ter’s per­for­mance was very strong. In 2021, for the quar­ter end­ed 31 De­cem­ber, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed re­port­ed prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion of $11.5 mil­lion, up by $2.5 mil­lion or 28 per cent from last year’s fourth quar­ter re­sult of $9 mil­lion. Fi­nal quar­ter rev­enues were bet­ter than in pri­or year pri­mar­i­ly as a re­sult of the na­tion­wide re­lax­ation in COVID re­stric­tions,” he stat­ed.

Clarke said in­ten­si­fied cost-cut­ting re­duced ex­pens­es by $6 mil­lion or six per cent year over year.

“Our full-year re­sults were un­der­pinned by ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ments, ro­bust cred­it man­age­ment and a net pos­i­tive change in the de­fined ben­e­fit pen­sion plan,” he stat­ed.

Clarke al­so an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn Mal­colm as GML’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor fol­low­ing the re­tire­ment of Bran­don Khan on Feb­ru­ary 28.

“On be­half of the Board of Di­rec­tors we wish to ex­press our sin­cere grat­i­tude to Bran­don for his lead­er­ship and un­con­di­tion­al com­mit­ment to the suc­cess of Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed over the last two un­prece­dent­ed years. We warm­ly wel­come our new Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn Mal­colm who as­sumed the po­si­tion on March 1, 2022,” Clarke stat­ed.

“We al­so take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press the Board and man­age­ment’s sin­cere thanks to our loy­al and fear­less em­ploy­ees for their un­re­served com­mit­ment to our cus­tomers through­out these chal­leng­ing times. To our cus­tomers and share­hold­ers, thank you for your on­go­ing sup­port,” he stat­ed.

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