Fairfax Media : Macquarie Australia Conference Presentation & Commentary

6 May 2016:

Fairfax Media Limited [ASX:FXJ] Chief Executive Officer Greg Hywood will today deliver a presentation at the Macquarie Australia Conference in Sydney.

Presentation commentary and accompanying slides are included in the PDF attachment.

As is our usual practice, the presentation contains a Trading Update, the details of which have been extracted below:

Trading Update
Overall Group revenues for continuing businesses are down 2% to 3% for the first 17 weeks of FY16 H2 (28 December 2015 to 24 April 2016) compared to the prior corresponding period. Fiscal 2016 year-to-date revenues for continuing businesses are up 0% to 1%.

Note that the base of last year includes 100% of MMP from February 2015 and 100% of Macquarie Media from April 2015.

Revenue across our current reporting segments for the first 17 weeks of FY16 H2:

• Metro Media, which includes Domain, is up around 2%.

─ Publishing revenues are down around 6%.

─ Domain overall revenue is up around 9% with its total digital business up 19%, and domain.com.au up 23%.

• Australian Community Media is down around 13%.

• New Zealand is down around 10% in local currency (NZD) and down around 15% in AUD.

• Macquarie Media is up around 49% on a continuing business basis (which excludes 96FM which was sold in January 2015) and up 43% on a reported basis. Last year's result includes only Fairfax Radio Network revenue until March 2015 and Macquarie Media from April 2015.

Our focus on cost reduction programs across publishing continues.