Profit season shifts media spotlight as homewares retailers rack up the mentions

There were some clear winners in the battle to get noticed during full year profit season, new data shows.

Some companies experienced massive gains in media profile during earnings season.

Media coverage about Temple & Webster surged 380 per cent through the August profit reporting season after the online furniture retailer booked a bumper full-year profit as stuck-at-home Aussies took to sprucing up their homes.

Adairs and Nick Scali, both in the home spending category, also received a huge uptick in media mentions for the reporting period, according to media monitoring company Streem. Both retailers emerged as winners out of the COVID-19 restrictions, booking bigger profits than the prior year.

Big companies and high-profile businesses still dominated coverage overall, with Commonwealth Bank, AfterPay and Telstra had the most prominent media coverage for the reporting period, with the highest number of stories where the company name is mentioned within the first 100 words.

According to Streem’s data, the biggest percentage increases in media coverage this reporting season went to retail brands as well as companies from the travel and healthcare sectors.

Still, the overall number of earnings-focused stories this year was down 11 per cent on the prior year, which Streem said was likely to be attributable to redundancies in the sector, including wire service AAP and the focus on coronavirus news.

The growth of live blogs was also a factor, with the format covering multiple profit results in a single story, Streem said.

Flight Centre and Sydney Airport both received more than double the coverage they did last year, as investors focused on the COVID-effected travel sector during the reporting season.

Westfield shopping mall landlord Scentre Group was in focus this year, with 295 per cent more media mentions than last reporting season, as it was hit by a significant number of rent relief claims from tenants who were were forced to shut during the coronavirus lockdowns.

“Afterpay was mentioned in a similar overall number of stories as last year but had a much higher prominence when you look at placement,” a Streem spokesman told The Australian.

“Outside Afterpay there seemed to be subdued interest in some of the other tech stocks: Appen, Altium and Wisetech had less earnings coverage this year.”