New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME) has today confirmed that it has reduced its workforce by about 200 people and has this morning asked staff to take a 15 per cent pay cut for 12 weeks.
In a statement to NZX, Chief Financial Officer David Mackrell said the company is continuing to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on the business, and outlined a number of cost-saving measures already undertaken.
Those measures include this morning asking all staff on salaries of more than $50,000 to opt in to a salary reduction of 15 per cent for 12 weeks - although employees near a $50,000 salary would not earn less than that amount.
NZME confirmed it had applied for and received the government wage subsidy for all eligible employees.
A restructuring project had already taken place, with the loss of more than "200 positions, including redundancies and removal of vacant positions", which represented a drop in their workforce numbers of 15 per cent.
Mr Mackrell said employees had also been asked to take annual leave, which 1 NEWS understands includes asking employees to take annual leave they had not earned yet.
NZME ceased broadcasting Radio Sport at the end of March, and NZME has reduced the size of its sports coverage teams, "with the expectation that NZME can substantially transfer the revenues from these operation to other NZME products," Mr Mackrell said.
"With the Alert Level 4 lockdown in place, NZME is expecting April 2020 advertising revenues to be approximately 50 per cent lower than April 2019," he said.
"While it remains impossible to predict with any accuracy the impact of the pandemic on NZME's full year financial performance, it is anticipated that revenue will be significantly down on the corresponding period in 2019.
"The cost saving initiatives above will partially offset the anticipated revenue declines.
"NZME will continue to monitor the revenue performance and the potential cost saving initiatives into the future."
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