UBC Media back in profit following torrid decade

UBC Media, which supplies multimedia content to the BBC and 250 commercial stations, has today reported its first period of operating profit after enduring a torrid decade since floating in 2000. Simon Cole, the UBC chief executive, said the company got burnt investing heavily in digital radio in the first part of the last decade, but since restructuring in 2007 had "successfully turned ourselves into an increasingly profitable content business". UBC, which also today revealed it had taken an 18% stake in Audioboo , announced that revenues grew 40% year-on-year to £4.9m, for the year to the end of March. The company added that underlying operating losses had massively reduced from £676,000 to £277,000 for the period. The company said it broke even in the second half of the year, which Cole believes will be the first time UBC has been in the black since floating on the stock market in 2000. UBC, one of the largest independent suppliers of radio programming to the BBC, also said it had managed to decrease its dependence on the corporation to below 50% of revenues for the first time. Cole said that the target was to have the BBC account for 39% of revenues by the end of March next year and to below 30% in two years. However, Cole added that a lot depended on the BBC Trust's current review into the corporation's programming supply in radio, which is due to report in the autumn. According to Cole, at present the BBC outsources about 8% of total radio output by hours and just 3% by value. He said that UBC is lobbying for an arrangement closer to the BBC's TV output, where 25% is guaranteed to be commissioned from independent producers and a further 25% contested between the corporation in-house and the commercial production market. Cole added that the company had successfully expanded its radio content roots into multimedia, with a four-fold rise in revenue from video services and 67 pieces of content created for clients including Guinness and Nestlé. The company has also so far signed up 45 radio stations to its iPhone app service, including Talksport's World Cup application. UBC Media builds iPhone apps for clients free of charge, then shares advertising revenue with the station. The company also signed its first iPhone app deal with a US station, WQMX in Cincinnati. "Our investments [prior to the 2007 restructure] caused years of operating losses," said Cole. "Certainly we have never seen the progress towards operating profit that we have seen over the last 18 months. It has been a transformational year." UBC started to restructure as a content business with the sale of the 18 Classic Gold network of stations to partner GCap Media , now Global Radio, in 2007 for £3.95m. The company shut the digital speech station OneWord in 2008 and ditched music download service Cliq . The last stage of the restructure was the sale of its commercial division, which supplied traffic information to UK radio stations, to America's Global Traffic Network in 2009 for £11m. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".