Cathy O'Connor delivers her best result for Ooh Media but analysts fear the future

Aug 18, 2025

Welcome to a Monday update from Unmade. Today: Cathy O’Connor delivered her best ever first half for Ooh Media, but the share price was decimated. What gives?

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Ooh Media’s unjust market cap decimation

Cathy O’Connor left the best until last.

Ooh Media’s first half results, released this morning, were her best H1 since she joined the out of home business at the beginning of 2021.

EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation - the red line on the graph) were up 26.3% year-on-year. Revenue (the green bar) was up 16.6% to $336m for the first six months of the year.

Last year’s shift of sales lead from Paul Sigaloff to Mark Fairhurst has certainly been justified.

When it’s time to deliver the full year results, SBS boss James Taylor will be in O’Connor’s chair. But the market seems certain Taylor won’t be announcing a similarly record-breaking H2. As the ASX closed tonight, Ooh Media’s share price was, counter-intuitively, down by more than 10%. That’s a hit to the market capitalisation of $100m.

This morning’s results call suggested that the financial analysts believe this half will not be as strong.

For one thing, as was previously disclosed, Ooh’s lucrative Auckland Transport Authority contract expires on September 30. The profit margin of individual contracts across the Ooh Media portfolio will also fall slightly. There was also little new to say about the company’s retail media play Reo.

Ooh Media described August and September revenue as “improving” by 6% which was perhaps the trigger for the share price fall. Thanks to previous disclosures, the market had already factored in the 16.6% revenue growth in the first half. Growth of just 6% in this quarter, and no prediction for the fourth quarter, led the market to conclude that things are slowing down.

That was despite Ooh predicting that it would hold onto its improved market share for the rest of the year, and that the outdoor industry will in turn take revenue from other sectors.

Nonetheless, the results showed growth, with more to come. I suspect that in the coming days, the share price will bounce back.

Unmade Index takes a hit as Ooh Media and Vinyl slump

The share prices of Ooh Media and Vinyl Group both took hits today.

Along with Ooh Media’s 10.2% fall, Vinyl took a 7.2% hit taking it close to its low point for the year. Ooh Media closed on a market capitalisation of $857m, while Vinyl was on $118m.

Nine also lost another 1.4% today. Nine will be one of the last stocks on the Unmade Index to share its results when it publishes its full year update on Wednesday of next week.