One aspect of a possible NEC–SCA deal that would be really interesting to keep an eye on is Nine’s current radio rights for big events like the Olympics and Paralympics.
If Nine ended up swapping its News Talk stations for Triple M, would those rights just carry over automatically? Or would the IOC/AOC and IPC/APC need to go back to the table with Nine and work out new agreements that take Triple M and/or LiSTNR into account?
Stock increase after release of financials.
Southern Cross Media $SXL soars as much as 22.7% to $0.81; set for best session since June 20, 2023. Media firm reports FY revenue of ~$422 mln, up 5% y/y. Posts FY underlying net profit attributable of $15.1 mln, above year-ago $4.5 mln.
— CommSec (@CommSec) August 25, 2025
Southern Cross Media Group Limited (ASX: SXL) (SCA) have announced its financial results for the year ended 30 June 2025. Revenue was $421.9 million, up 5.0%, with reported EBITDA of $59.3 million. Digital revenue grew by 28.8% to $45.1 million with LiSTNR now EBITDA cashflow positive.
Revenue was further up 39.4% on FY24, with NPAT including the sale of TV assets. As a result of this and redundancies earlier this year underlying Non-Revenue Related (NRR) costs for continuing operations was $263.5 million, better than was anticipated by the organisation and down $6.7 million on FY24.
The SCA Board has decided to declare a fully franked 4 cents per share final dividend for FY25.
Nine should stay out of radio once it sells off the AM stations to someone that isn’t Hutchy.
What appeal does SCA have to Nine? What SCA needs is someone fresh - not a dinosaur like Nine.
And honestly, I’d be considering splitting the company up - metro and regional as separate companies.
Also, there is too much media concentration in Australia. Nine and SCA need to be kept apart.
That’s a very outdated view when it comes to media these days. They need scale.
The valuable 25-54 listener and not the 65+ one.
Makes a bucket load of sense to me.
It might make a bucket load of sense to you, but I think it’s more of the same. I don’t think Nine would make things any better.
SCA needs new blood. I don’t think Nine is the new blood it needs.
As long as Nine don’t tinker too much with the Hit and MMM extensions, and fire too many SCA employees, I don’t think the quality of output would necessarily be diminished.
If anything , with cross-promotion across Nine’s other brands, it could boost the brand recognition of MMM, Hit and LiSTNR and align them with their NRL and other sporting rights. EPL live on MMM Classic Rock could even be revived, as it was back in 2014-15.
With scale, Nine could also make LiSTNR a truly global brand on par with the Global Player and iHeartRadio apps.
Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) has announced the promotion of Georgie de Visser to National Head of The Studio.
The Studio at SCA was established in 2017 as SCA’s dedicated in-house creative and commercial content division.
Activist investor raids SCA again
Sandon Capital, the activist investor pushing to sack the board of directors at SCA, has increased its stake in the broadcaster to 11.3% from 10.2%.
Sandon has since June lifted its holding from 6.1% in three on market raids, the latest purchase costing almost 80 cents a share to add another 2.5 million shares.
According to filings to the ASX, Sandown now has 27,012,511 shares in SCA.
Sandon Capital Pty Ltd have purchased an additional 2.5 million shares in Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), upping their voting power from 10.2 to 11.3%.
Sandon Capital is Australian-based activist investment firm who buy shares in companies they perceive as undervalued and underperforming companies to influence their boards to take action. SCA share prices have substantially improved in the last year, reaching a high of 84c yesterday. The 12 month low was nearly half that at 45c.
Interesting to see shareholders sharpening their knives ahead of November’s AGM.
Yesterday it was Sandon bolstering its position in SCA. Today, it’s Spheria buying up another 4,960,529 shares and upping its voting power to 13.88% from 11.81%.
Do we know what Sandon’s main criticisms are of SCA management?
It’s a few things:
Probably missing some things, but good place to start…
Good starting point indeed, what do you feel is missing @reliably_informed ?
Sandon and others are on the right track to vote against all SCA suggested board nominations. Renewal is essential and accepting what the board is trying to get away with is not going to improve SCA.
Renewal in what form, exactly? How do you see the company “moving forward”?
Consider the circumstances: SCA’s biggest rival, ARN, has pursued every possible avenue to engineer a backdoor “merger.” The intent has been clear — to weaken SCA’s market position through selective network swaps, designed not to benefit SCA, but to strengthen ARN at SCA’s expense.
We’ve also seen ACM attempt to force a “merger” that would have dragged SCA into newspapers, with Catalano positioned to remain at the helm of the new entity. That move was never about genuine synergy; it was a blatant attempt to hijack the “Southern Cross” name and rebrand ACM under the credibility and reach SCA has built over decades.
And yet, people panic at the prospect of Nine Entertainment showing interest in SCA. Why? What are they actually afraid of? Do they seriously believe LISTNR will suddenly morph overnight into “Stan Audio”?
If the real issue is SCA’s future direction, then the focus should be on what growth and renewal genuinely look like — not on knee-jerk fears from certain investors or opportunistic plays from parties with no plan for the company other than dismantling it.
Now that they’ve got back to being audio-only, they probably need a little bit of time to shake things out. Their full-year results last month looked ok, and will be a good platform to move from.
Some of the talk around realising “true value” seems to be about making them healthy for any market consolidation.
They’re not large dividends so far (1cps and 4cps) and I would imagine that there are also shareholders who are happy that they’re in a position to pay dividends too.
Their full-year results indicate they’ve knocked nearly 40% off (I assume thanks to the TV sales) - they could always get rid of more, but it looks like they’ve also built some headroom with debt financing facilities too.
SCA is in a much better position than it was a decade ago or even 5 years ago before LiSTNR launched.
They are the market leaders in audio, although it helps that they bought the lions share of DAB spectrum in 2009, but at least they’re doing something with it, unlike some of their competitors.
LiSTNR has potential to be the Australian version of the Global player , available to download and listen all over the world, not just in Aus & NZ.
From Radio Today:
And on Radioinfo: