Music and media company Chrysalis reported an impressive jump in pre-tax profits yesterday - though suffered a poor reception from the city because of their assessment of the radio advertising market. Chrysalis, who own Echo Records, the music publishing company of the same name, and a number of radio stations, including the Heart and Galaxy stations, announced that profits in the year ending 31 Aug were up from £2.5 million last year to £5.8 million this year, despite a fall of revenues from $133.6 million to £131.9 million. But Chrysalis bosses admitted that the radio market had been "particularly challenging" over the summer, and remained that way throughout September and October, meaning radio revenues were down so far this financial year. Despite assuring investors they were confident they would see some growth as the financial year continued, the group's share price fell 11.75p.
Commenting on the share price fall, Chrysalis CEO Richard Huntingford told the Guardian: "I am surprised by the share price reaction because we didn't think what we were saying about the decline in September and October would be new news to anybody. I think the disappointment is that probably we have confirmed what I think a lot of people have feared". But he added that he felt it was important to be realistic when making predictions to the city, adding that a realistic perspective had helped his company make considerable achievements in the last year. He continued: "[we have] a really good set of results given what has been a tough year for the media industry as a whole. I think we are the only media company that will have actually delivered results in line with expectations that were set a year ago. That's been driven by outperformance for the both the radio and the music businesses."
The music side of Chrysalis' business continued to do well, the recently revamped Echo Records (now run as an 'incubator label' to pilot new work by songwriters represented by the firm's publishing division) has returned a profit, while Chrysalis publishing had a number of successes, not least Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy', on which Huntingdon added: "That would have been one of the most played songs throughout Europe, throughout the world probably, which for us as a publisher is brilliant because we earn on it however it is used".