This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on May 13, 2016.

KUALA LUMPUR: Media Prima Bhd’s net profit for the first financial quarter ended March 31, 2016 dropped 8.67% to RM17.25 million or 1.55 sen per share, from RM18.88 million or 1.70 sen per share last year, due to a fall in top line.

The weaker financial performance was mainly because of a 18% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in print media revenue, due to lower advertising and newspaper sales. Its content creation segment also suffered an external sales contraction of 25% y-o-y, due to seasonal factors.

As such, quarterly revenue also fell 7.68% to RM304.06 million, from RM329.39 million a year ago, on lower advertising revenue and newspaper sales, according to its bourse filing yesterday.

“[The] outlook for 2016 remains challenging as market sentiment remains cautious, in view of current economic conditions and increase in [the] cost of living.

“Within the media industry, factors such as customer fragmentation, technological advancement, shift of advertisement to digital media and increased competition from global media players will continue to pose challenges to the group,” Media Prima said.

Moving forward, it intends to leverage its television network to boost home shopping to generate new revenue and continue growing its digital out-of-home solutions at key and premium sites.

It will also leverage its intellectual properties to provide a platform for digital and mobile products and services, besides targeting external revenue growth from co-productions and original scripted content productions.