Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

For the three months end­ed March 31, 2020, Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) reg­is­tered a net prof­it of $1.3 mil­lion, up $6.7 mil­lion when com­pared to a net loss of $5.4 mil­lion for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2019.

In the re­lease of GML’s fi­nan­cial state­ments, chair­man Pe­ter Clarke said that the in­crease “rep­re­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments from ac­cel­er­at­ing rev­enue growth and im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies.”

Clarke ex­plained:” We ben­e­fit­ed from pri­or year in­vest­ments in im­prov­ing our sales ef­fec­tive­ness and el­e­vat­ing ed­i­to­r­i­al con­tent to achieve a year-over-year growth in core ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enues of $3.3 mil­lion or 13 per cent de­spite rev­enue pres­sures caused by COVID-19.”

The print seg­ment of the me­dia house con­tributed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15mil­lion in rev­enue to the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions, while the mul­ti-me­dia seg­ment gen­er­at­ed $13.3 mil­lion bring­ing to­tal rev­enue to a fu­ture of $28.3 mil­lion.

GML al­so record­ed a non-re­cur­ring write back of ex­pense ac­cru­als of $1.8 mil­lion from the ne­go­ti­a­tion of con­tract­ed li­censed ser­vices. Clarke not­ed that, ex­clud­ing this one off ex­pense re­duc­tion record­ed in the first quar­ter re­sults, the me­dia house achieved a year-over-year de­cline in nor­malised ex­pens­es of $3.2 mil­lion or 11 per cent due to ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ments and a re­duc­tion of con­trol­lable ex­pens­es.

The Chair­man said that from mid-march, GML’s busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plans were ac­ti­vat­ed with work-from-home arrange­ments put in place for a sub­stan­tial num­ber of em­ploy­ees.

He re­marked that the com­pa­ny’s fo­cus dur­ing the pan­dem­ic is to serve its com­mu­ni­ties, keep peo­ple in­formed and pro­tect the health of its em­ploy­ees whilst re­spond­ing quick­ly to mar­ket changes and chal­lenges brought about by COVID-19.

Clarke ex­pressed pride in the GML em­ploy­ees and recog­nised “their coura­geous ef­forts in con­tribut­ing to the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al well­be­ing of our cit­i­zen­ry.”

He said that while GML’s COVID-19 re­sponse is pro­gress­ing well, it is dif­fi­cult to as­sess and pre­dict the broard ef­fect of COVID-19 on the busi­ness and op­er­a­tions for the sec­ond quar­ter “as the ac­tu­al im­pact is de­pen­dent on fac­tors be­yond our com­pa­ny’s con­trol and knowl­edge giv­en the on­go­ing, chang­ing and un­cer­tain sit­u­a­tion.”

The GML chair­man in­di­cat­ed: “We will con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence some fur­ther lo­gis­ti­cal and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges.”

Ac­cord­ing to Clarke, the great­est con­cern of the com­pa­ny lies with rev­enue loss­es in the sec­ond quar­ter from stay-at-home or­ders and clo­sure of non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es that con­tin­ue to im­pact the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial mar­kets.