Nine Entertainment the owner of the Nine Network and streaming Company Stan and 9 Now is struggling with EBITDA falling 15% despite a 1% lift in revenues.

In the streaming market Stan was able to lift revenues in the half year to December 2024  from $228M to $294M while 9 Now grew 28%.

Management at the national TV network claimed that macro-economic uncertainty has continued to impact Nine’s key markets, particularly linear and digital advertising markets which remained soft throughout the period.

The Companies total television advertising 5.4%1 to $1.4 billion1, during the six months to 31 December 2024. This is principally driven by the Metro Free To Air market, which experienced a 10.1% decline in the period to $1.1 billion.

Currently the Company is in discussions to sell their Domain business as revenues only climbed because of their multimillion dollar investment in the last and future Olympics broadcast rights.

Despite TV revenues tanking management claim that they are confident that revenues will bounce back this year, with political advertising in an Election year always favouring TV Companies.

Analysts claim that without the Paris Olympics coverage their TV business would be “deep in the red”.

Another highlight for the business was 9Now revenue that was up 28% in the second half of 2024.

Domain, which is up for sale, delivered revenue growth EBIDTA was up 15% to $78 million with US Company Costar making an offer for the Company last week.

CoStar has offered $2.6 billion for the local real estate classifieds company.

The US property data group offered $4.20 a share, a premium of 34.6 per cent over Domain’s most recent closing price, this saw Citi analyst Siraj Ahmed claim that the offer wouldn’t be enough to seal the deal because CoStar would likely need Nine (Domain’s 60 per cent shareholder) to drive consumer share, “given Domain has seen improving audience metrics by working closely and collaborating with Nine” as well as the Companies media mastheads.

Currently Nine is flagging a further $100 million in cost cuts through to the end of the 2027 financial year, on top of the company’s previous guidance of $50 million in 2025.

Nine’s acting chief financial officer, Graeme Cassells, told analysts on Tuesday that the company expects to exceed its 2025 cost saving target by about $10 million to $20 million.

He said the company expects to have pulled half of its additional $100 million cost saving target out in the 2026 financial year, with the remaining $50 million to come out in 2027.

Shares in Nine rose about 4% in early trading on Tuesday to $1.70 a share at 10:28am AEDT.

Overall, Nine Entertainment posted a first-half net profit of $95 million with revenues growing 1% to $1.41 billion for the half.

(EBITDA) fell 15% to $268 million, with net profit after tax and minorities of $95.1 million, down 29% on the same period on last year and that was taking into account their investment in the last Olympics that drove growth at Nine Now.

Nine claims that Domain remains of strategic importance to Nine’s media ecosystem and the company’s “long-term growth strategy”. The company said it’d consider the proposal.

“In a challenging market environment, we have continued to perform well operationally, while simultaneously strengthening our strategic position and implementing our cultural reset,” Nine chairman Catherine West said earlier today.

Nine’s acting CEO Matt Stanton said: “Operationally, we were generally pleased with the performance of our portfolio in the half. In particular, at Stan, subscriber numbers exceeded our expectations, underpinning 16% growth in EBITDA whilst at Publishing, digital subscription revenues at our mastheads grew by 15% (ex the impact of Meta and Google), with the team also doing a great job with cost efficiencies offsetting much of the impact of the Meta withdrawal.”