Here comes the year of simplification
Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade.
Today: We explore the trend towards simplifying business models in media and agencyland.
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Simplifying
Just one day into the new financial year and the Unmade Index’s trend of FY26 is already emerging: simplification.
Sometimes simplification is forced upon you. Nine’s train switched to the simplification track when Costar lobbed the takeover bid for Domain. And if there was any doubt about Nine’s future path as a sports-centred TV business, that was cleared up with this week’s acquisition of the Optus Sport English Premier League rights.
Another signal in a flurry of announcements to kick off the financial year came confirmation that Southern Cross Austereo wrapped up the sale of the last of its TV licences to Seven West Media. Now it’s a pure play audio company.
Then came yesterday’s announcement from Enero. It’s finally managed to get shot of its majority holding in crappy adtech business OBMedia.
Enero will record a $14m+ loss on the deal, but at least it has now got a simplified purpose. No more messing around with one foot in adtech, Enero is purely an agency holding company.
As Enero boss Ian Ball put it: “This divestment supports our strategy to focus on our award-winning agencies where we see the greatest potential for growth, differentiation and value creation. Enero is proud to be home to three specialist, high performing, profitable agencies: Hotwire Global, BMF and Orchard.”
There’s a debate to be had about whether this is a good time to own agencies, but at least it’s a simple strategy.
Then there’s Gumtree. The company that sprang out of pump-and-dump small stock gossip forum Hot Copper, got ambitious with the launch of The Market Herald, then bought Gumtree, Carsguide and Autotrader has divested too.
On Monday Gumtree announced a deal to sell HotCopper and its Canadian counterpart Stockhouse to finance analysis platform ADVFN. Again it’s a low value deal - perhaps $2m in cash plus the new owner repaying loans on Gumtree’s behalf.
But here comes that simplification line again. According to Gumtree: “The board believes that this simplification of the investment story for the company and the focus of the exciting online marketplace sector with higher profitability levels will make investment in the company more attractive to shareholders and the investment community more broadly.”
What’s certainly true is that in recent months Gumtree has been deeply unattractive to shareholders with a 44% decline in share price over the last year. Yesterday it improved by 5.6%
Broadly, the market does seem to like everyone’s simplification stories. With Domain issuing a timetable for a shareholder vote on its sale, 60.1% owner Nine was up 1.5% yesterday.
And Enero was up by a hefty 28.5%. Talk about a relief rally.
Meanwhile, the Unmade Index started the year in positive territory, up by 1.3% to 571.9 points
More from Mumbrella…
Opinion: AI is killing the web economy and marketers are going to suffer
SMI: Ad spend declines in May as poor government spend ‘dampens’ demand
Time to leave you to your morning.
I’m currently in London for MAD//fest, and Sir Martin Sorrell had many golden nuggets to dispense. I’ll have more on that tomorrow.
And if you’re in the publishing world, don’t forget that the final deadline for the Publish Awards is this Friday. Whichever part of the publishing world you’re involved in, there are relevant categories for you.
Have a great day
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
