Singapore Press Holdings Limited (SGX: T39), or SPH, has just released its fiscal full-year 2020 (FY 2020) earnings report.
It wasn’t a pretty picture.
Although total revenue inched down by just 2.4% year on year to S$954.6 million, total costs went up by 6.8% year on year.
The disconnect led to operating profit plunging by 41% year on year from S$187 million a year ago to S$110.2 million in FY 2020.
A downward valuation of the group’s investment properties of S$232 million and the impairment of an associate of S$10 million dragged SPH into its first-ever full-year loss of S$83.7 million.
The government’s Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) has helped to provide around S$28.1 million of assistance for SPH’s media division, but the group also incurred a one-time retrenchment expense of S$16.6 million during the fiscal year when it announced a restructuring of this division back in August.
The restructuring will affect around 140 staff from the Media division and is part of two restructuring...