Zinc Media revenue diversification growing very well (LON:ZIN)

Zinc Media Group plc (LON:ZIN) Chief Executive Officer Mark Browning caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the highlights from their final results, significant programme success and how they continue to diversify their revenue base.

Q1: First off, congratulations on a strong set of results. Mark, could you just talk us through the highlights?

A1: Yes, so revenue is growing again, revenue diversification is growing very well, lots of new clients in lots of new markets. I think Zinc Media’s margin improvement that we’ve reported today is outstanding and our forward bookings for the year are up on the same time as they were this time last year.

So, we’re looking at a positive year ahead so all of the metrics that we track feel like they’re going in the right direction.

Q2: Now, the group delivered a number of significant programme successes during the year, can you expand on that for us?

A2: So, we’ve had big successes with BBC, BBC One in particular, as well as breaking into new territories with Channel 5 with our largest series commission with Channel 5, the multi-channel networks were a strategic priority, they included people like Sky and Discovery and UKTV, an area that we’ve not traditionally been able to win business from and we’ve won business from all three of those channels in this last year.

So, our first commission with Sky, that was actually our first advertiser funded commission, it was with Sky Arts and Adobe, first commission from the Discovery Group for a series out of Tern TV in Scotland and our first commission with Dave which is part of the UKTV Group.

So, it’s really important that this diversification into new markets is working, it partly helps to soften out some of the other markets that we’re in, the historical markets where the BBC and ITV have played. These new markets are very important and we’ve also moved into brand advertiser-led content so the launch of Supercollider has seen us win television business from brands like Red Bull and LEGO which will never appear on a scheduled television channel but will appear on a big screen on Red Bull TV and on social and on mobile.

So, brands are increasingly buying television from premium content companies like us, and that’s all part of the revenue diversification strategy that we set out a couple of years ago.

Q3: Can you tell us more about how the group has continued to diversify its revenue base?

A3: Well, Zinc Communicate is part of that and Zinc Communicate we’ve launched a number of new businesses in there. We now have a podcast business because we have traditionally been very strong in radio so we now moved into podcast. We’ve won our first advertiser-funded podcast, Fullers sponsored our London Pride series presented by Lawrence Dellaglio.

We’ve got a new video marketing corporate production business that we started last year that has got huge potential to accelerate this year and an advertiser-funded branded content business which is the one that picked up the Sky Arts commission.

So, in podcasting, we announced last year we’ve picked up our first podcast with Amazon audible for example, so there are five new businesses that we launched, during COVID really, that have contributed virtually almost 17% so nearly 20% of our turnover reported last year, from new businesses, new markets that Zinc Media wasn’t in. All of them have the potential for accelerated growth in the next three to five years so that’s an important part of the strategy.

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