Media Prima Berhad

Media Prima Berhad, Malaysia’s largest integrated media group, in its financial year ended 30 June 2025 had revenue up by 2% to RM857.0 million (approximately €170m / US$185m) from RM844.0 million a year earlier, and the group posted a profit after tax of RM20.7 million (approximately €4.1m / US$4.5m).

The headline comparison is less straightforward than it looks. The reported figures for the previous year included a one-off accounting adjustment (the reversal of RM30.1 million in accrued road-reserve fees) that flattered 2024’s apparent profit of RM60.6 million. Without that, there is a normalised 2024 profit of RM30.5 million, and on that basis 2025’s profit was 32% lower, primarily reflecting higher investment in film and television content rather than operational deterioration.

Media Prima operates what has become an unusual structure in 2026: a single publicly listed national media group that still maintains a full cross-media portfolio of free-to-air television, radio, daily newspapers, digital news publishing, outdoor advertising, home shopping and content production under one roof. Most peers in Europe, North America and Asia have disaggregated these functions over the past decade. The group’s integrated marketing arm OMNiA reports effective reach of approximately 98% of Malaysian households, making Media Prima one of the most influential commercial media operators in Southeast Asia.

Media Prima Berhad, key financial indicators

Source: Media Prima Berhad Annual Report 2025. Currency conversions based on mid-2025 market rates (approximately RM5.05 per EUR; RM4.64 per US$) and are indicative.

Revenue by business segment, FY2025

Source: Media Prima Berhad Group Financial Review and Group Managing Director’s Management Discussion and Analysis, FY2025

Media Prima’s principal media assets

Source: Media Prima Berhad Annual Report 2025

Signals

Signal one: Malaysian journalism has been consolidated into a single newsroom

The most consequential journalism development in FY2025 was the integration of Media Prima Television Networks’ news operations with the newsrooms of New Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro into a single unit called News and Current Affairs. The consolidation is physical as well as editorial: the television newsrooms have moved from the Sri Pentas studios into Balai Berita Bangsar, the traditional newspaper building. The group describes the ambition as building a “Super Newsroom” that combines the production resources of six separate titles and three broadcast outlets under a single management structure. The stated logic is efficiency and multi-platform reach, but the practical effect is that the editorial decisions shaping news consumption for a large share of Malaysians, across English-, Malay- and Mandarin-language audiences, in both broadcast and print, now run through a single integrated operation. The group says each title retains editorial autonomy; the financial logic of the merger creates obvious pressure on that claim over time.

Signal two: the reach numbers show how central this group is to Malaysian daily life

Buletin Utama, the flagship TV3 evening news, reached 2.9 million viewers in FY2025. 8TV Mandarin News reached 1.3 million viewers with a 21.6% audience share among Mandarin-speaking Malaysians. The group captured a 57% share of Malaysia’s total television audience. In radio, its five stations collectively reached 5.865 million weekly listeners, a 39.8% market share, with Hot FM alone on 3.9 million. In print, Berita Harian recorded 3.34 million monthly unique visitors online and 3.56 million weekly readers; Harian Metro 3.15 million monthly unique visitors; New Straits Times 1.66 million monthly unique visitors. These are enormous shares for a single company in a country of 34 million people. The financial scale of the group, annual revenue roughly equivalent to a mid-sized European regional publisher, sits awkwardly against the scale of its influence on public information.

Signal three: the ownership structure concentrates influence in a single businessman

The statistics of shareholdings in the Annual Report confirm Aurora Mulia Sdn Bhd as the largest shareholder with 31.9% of the company, followed by JAG Capital (through CIMSEC nominees) with 25.0%. Both holdings connect to Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary (referred to in the filings as Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Syed Mokhtar Shah bin Syed Nor, or “TSSM”), one of Malaysia’s wealthiest businessmen. The same ultimate shareholder controls MYTV Broadcasting, the digital terrestrial television infrastructure provider to which Media Prima’s television business pays subscription fees, of RM18.5 million (≈€3.7m / US$4.0m) in FY2025. Media Prima’s newspaper printing is carried out by a related entity connected to the same shareholder. The group’s advertising-sales arm (Omnia) sells media-related solutions to the TSSM Group, generating RM12.2 million (≈€2.4m / US$2.6m) during the year, and to Media Mulia. This is a closed commercial system in which Malaysia’s largest listed media company, its digital-television transmission infrastructure, and a number of its commercial counterparties ultimately report to the same private shareholder. These relationships represent a concentration of commercial control over a large part of the Malaysian news system that is unusual in any publicly listed media company globally.

Signal four: the film business is now structurally important to Malaysian television economics

Revenue from content sales more than doubled in FY2025, rising from RM15.6 million to RM33.5 million (≈€6.6m / US$7.2m). This was driven almost entirely by two films produced or marketed by Primeworks Studios, Media Prima’s content production arm: Ejen Ali The Movie 2, which, according to industry reporting cited in the Annual Report, earned more than RM63 million (≈€12.5m / US$13.6m) at the box office across Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia and Thailand to become the fourth-highest-grossing Malaysian film of all time; and Blood Brothers: Bara Naga, a co-production that grossed more than RM78 million (≈€15.4m / US$16.8m). The economic implication is significant: a group whose core business has historically been television advertising now depends increasingly on cinema releases and content licensing to digital platforms to offset declining advertising revenue. The 3% decline in advertising income during the year was more than offset by the combined growth in content sales and home-shopping goods. For a commercial broadcaster, this is a substantive strategic shift: the content business is no longer a supplement to the broadcasting business; it is the growth engine.

Signal five: free educational television has become one of the group’s most important public-service functions

DIDIKTV KPM, a free educational channel operated as a partnership between the Ministry of Education, Bahagian Sumber dan Teknologi Pendidikan and Media Prima’s ntv7 (launched February 2021), reached 12.9 million cumulative viewers monthly and 4.5 million unique Malaysians in FY2025. Viewership peaked during the SPM examination period in December 2024 to January 2025. The channel carries free curriculum-aligned content aimed at lower-income and rural families without reliable broadband access. In countries with well-developed public-service broadcasters, this function is typically performed by the state broadcaster. In Malaysia, the dominant commercial broadcaster is effectively acting as the educational-television provider in partnership with the government. The financial contribution of DIDIKTV KPM is not separately reported, but its social footprint, reaching roughly one-eighth of the Malaysian population monthly, makes it one of the most consequential components of the group’s public role, and one that is almost invisible in purely commercial accounts.

Outlook

Media Prima ended FY2025 with RM312.9 million (≈€62m / US$67m) in cash (down RM49.1 million on the year after heavy capital expenditure on the Balai Berita Bangsar building), total borrowings and lease liabilities of RM315.7 million (≈€63m / US$68m), and a modest gearing ratio of 0.44. The group is profitable but on thin margins: FY2025’s return on shareholders’ equity was 3%, down from 10% on the reported prior-year basis (or 8% when adjusted for the one-off accounting reversal).

Management signals continued pressure on advertising and continued investment in content and digital infrastructure. For a company whose commercial model has historically relied on mass television advertising in one of Asia’s most rapidly digitalising economies, the combination of consolidating journalism operations, producing successful cinema content, and hosting national educational television on behalf of the state describes a business that is, deliberately or otherwise, moving away from pure broadcasting toward something closer to a national media utility. The question the next financial year will ask is whether that hybrid model can continue to generate the returns needed to fund it.

Sources: Media Prima Berhad, Annual Report 2025, filed with Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad on 30 October 2025. Consolidated financial statements audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers PLT. FY2025 results announcement: 27 August 2025.