Unmade Index scorecard: The first quarter
Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade. Today, with the first quarter of 2025 done and dusted, how did the players on the Unmade Index fare?
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Quarter time: How the Domain bid lifted the Unmade Index
It makes a pleasant change to report on a quarter where the Unmade Index grew.
And admittedly that’s in large part thanks to the revaluation of Nine driven by CoStar’s bid for Domain.
Still, a win’s a win, and this is a win for the sector.
In the January to March quarter, the Unmade Index rose by 22% to 527.4 points.
The scores on their doors show Domain as the winner, with its $2.7bn market capitalisation up by 67.7% since the start of 2025. That helped drag Nine, the second best performer, up by 22.4%. Nine owns 60% of Domain, for the next few weeks, anyhow.
The listed media company which grew the most during the quarter without the use of artificial sweeteners is Ooh Media, up by 24.8%.
Much of that is down to the turnaround in Ooh’s sales performance since Mark Fairhurst took the helm. In the February results, CEO Cathy O’Connor reported the company was on track for the quarter to be up by 14% year-on-year.
The new numbers released by GuidelineSMI this week reflect the buoyancy in the wider outdoor sector which was up by 9.2% in February.
Then comes research housed Pureprofile, up by 20% as the market starts to reassess its prospects after CEO Martin Filz took it into profitability and chairman Michael Anderson came on board.
Seven West Media had a better quarter, coming up 14.3% off its low point.
At the other end of the table comes mining publisher Aspermont, which now has a tiny market capitalisation of $9.8m, and one exposed to wild percentage fluctuations at that.
Gumtree (previously The Market Ltd, and The Market Herald, and HotCopper) continues to be a basket case, down 26.9% for the quarter.
Enero, owner of agencies including BMF and Hotwire, is also losing the market’s belief in its prospects. It lost 24.8% over the quarter.
And notably in the audio sector, ARN Media and Southern Cross Austereo are experiencing reversing fortunes. SCA was up 6.35% (albeit off a low base) and ARN Media lost 17.8%. If the gap continues to close, SCA may once again overtake ARN for market cap.
Nonetheless, the Unmade Index is still a long way back from when we kicked it off on a nominal 1000 points at the start of 2022. Three years on, $1000 invested in media stocks is now worth $527. Ouch.
Unmade index starts the new quarter flat
More companies on the Unmade Index went backwards than forwards yesterday. However a couple of bigger moves into positive territory kept the overall index dead level.
In the top end of town, Nine dipped by 0.7% while its majority real estate platform Domain gained 0.9% to land on $4.30, ever closer to the Costar offer of $4.43.
Seven West Media and Ooh Media were both losers yesterday, while Vinyl Group improved by 6.4%.
The Unmade Index closed on 527.4 points.
Time to leave you to your Wednesday.
We’ll be back with more later in the week.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
