Seven West Media has recorded an annual net profit of $211.1m

Seven West Media chief executive officer James Warburton said the company is now in its strongest financial position in more than a decade.

Seven West Media boss James Warburton said the company’s streaming and catch-up service 7Plus has soared to 13 million registered users and they will continue to build on this by personalising services for consumers.

The Kerry Stokes-led company posted on Tuesday an annual net profit of $211.1m – a drop of 34 per cent – despite recording a 21 per cent rise in revenue to $1.54bn.

The media company’s EBITDA was $342.2m for the 2022 financial year and Mr Warburton, the managing director and chief executive officer, also announced a on-market buyback of up to 10 per cent of shares on issue.

He said 7Plus accounted for more than 40 per cent of the FY22 earnings, compared to just 2 per cent four years ago.

“The more minutes you drive the more ad revenue you can bring to the fore so it’s a really exciting opportunity for us to load the engine and keep it rolling,” Mr Warburton said.

“We continue to explore our options in the subscription streaming market and our discussions with potential content makers are ongoing.”

Revenue from Seven Digital grew by 93 per cent to $178m and EBITDA rose by 129 per cent to $139m.

Mr Warburton said the company was in the “strongest financial position we’ve been in for over a decade” and it was well placed to build on the increasing growth.

“These results represent the best Seven TV EBITDA result in 11 years, the best EBITDA for West Australian Newspapers in five years and our best group EBITDA result in six years,” he said on Tuesday.

“Seven is now the number one network nationally in audience share and we’ve converted that into the number one position in revenue share.”

In FY22 Seven West also completed the acquisition of Prime Media Group.

The company’s net debt at the end of December was $256.5m and its operating costs were between $1.19bn and $1.21bn.

Seven is the AFL’s current domestic rights holder alongside Foxtel and deliberations are continuing to lock in a TV rights deal for 2025 and beyond.

It has been widely reported that Foxtel (which is 65 per cent owned by News Corp, publisher of The Australian) and Channel 7 are in a strong position to continue sharing the rights, but Mr Warburton remained tight-lipped about the discussions.

“In the 62 years since television started in 1956 we have carried it (AFL) for all but six years, we have a very strong relationship with Gillon (McLachlan) and the Commission,” he said.

“We’ve done an incredibly good job together in terms of building the AFL into the number one sport in the market, they know our value, we know the value, we’re working through an active process and we’ll see where things land.”

He said they will continue to focus on being the broadcaster for key many sports and said, “we look at everything through economics over ego”.

“What is the overall halo effect that something might have, we are going to make sensible decisions going forward in terms of all of those rights,” Mr Warburton.

He noted the advertising market is on the rebound and “talk of a recession is well and truly overblown”.

Mr Warburton said he planned to give a more detailed outlook at the company’s AGM in November.