Guardian Me­dia has record­ed rev­enues for the quar­ter end­ing June 30, 2022 at $24.5 mil­lion, an in­crease of $3.1 mil­lion or 14.5 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2021.

A loss be­fore tax­a­tion of $4.3mil­lion was in­curred ver­sus a loss be­fore tax of $2.8 mil­lion in the pri­or year.

Chair­man Pe­ter Clarke in his state­ment said, “This quar­ter’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance was neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the wind­ing up of a key agency part­ner as well as non-re­cur­rent op­er­at­ing costs. Man­age­ment re­mains fo­cused on dri­ving ef­fi­cien­cies and the con­tin­u­ous re­duc­tion of con­trol­lable ex­pens­es.”

He said as the na­tion’s lead­ing me­dia group, GML, has strate­gi­cal­ly in­vest­ed in pro­vid­ing the mar­ket with the world’s largest me­dia prop­er­ty, the FI­FA World Cup Qatar 2022.

Lo­cal­ly, Clarke added, the me­dia in­dus­try in the post pan­dem­ic re­al­i­ty re­quired a plat­form for brands to re-en­gage with cus­tomers.

“These fi­nals pro­vide a ve­hi­cle for all stake­hold­ers to en­joy un­prece­dent­ed mar­ket en­gage­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween con­sumers and brands, through the mag­ic of World Cup Foot­ball in the last quar­ter where for most com­pa­nies, sales peak.

“This in­jec­tion from Guardian Me­dia is in­tend­ed to gen­er­ate and sus­tain a new wave of growth in this post pan­dem­ic era,” the chair­man said.

Clarke fur­ther ex­plained that glob­al sup­ply-chain dis­rup­tions and the re­sul­tant pres­sure on com­mod­i­ty prices con­tin­ue to present the re­gion with risks and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“In spite of the cur­rent ar­ray of macro-eco­nom­ic and in­dus­try spe­cif­ic chal­lenges, we have a pos­i­tive out­look for the rest of this fi­nan­cial year,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Clarke, the me­dia in­dus­try has been forced to evolve with a greater fo­cus placed on dig­i­tal and con­tent cre­ation.

“We are con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to en­hance the com­pet­i­tive ap­peal of our port­fo­lio through our bun­dled ser­vices which of­fer our clients the right mix of plat­forms, in­cor­po­rat­ing all as­pects of both tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal me­dia.

“We of­fer more con­nec­tions than any oth­er me­dia house through our di­verse brand port­fo­lio of sev­en ra­dio fre­quen­cies, the T&T Guardian and Sun­day Guardian, 15 dig­i­tal bill­boards, a lead­ing TV sta­tion and a grow­ing dig­i­tal port­fo­lio,” Clarke al­so not­ed.

He said dig­i­tal suc­cess­es to date in­clud­ed widen­ing the com­pa­ny’s reach to au­di­ences through 1.4 mil­lion con­nec­tions dai­ly.

“Au­di­ences across all plat­forms are re­ceiv­ing deep­er and more en­gag­ing en­ter­tain­ment and cur­rent af­fairs con­tent.

“We are geared to bring the 2022 Hero CPL T20 Caribbean Pre­mier League to you in the third quar­ter,” the chair­man added.

Based on the over­all per­for­mance for the half year un­der re­view, di­rec­tors have not rec­om­mend­ed a 2022 in­ter­im or­di­nary div­i­dend pay­ment in re­spect of the six months end­ed June 30, 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, six per cent pref­er­ence share­hold­ers will re­ceive an in­ter­im div­i­dend of three per cent.