John Fairfax Holdings

John Fairfax Holdings Company

The John Fairfax Holdings Company is a diversified media company based out of Australia. It is the largest company of its kind in its region. It is publically traded in the Australian Stock Exchange. It is known as Fairfax Media since 2007. This company has a majority shareholder of Gina Rinehart; who is also the wealthiest person in Australia (Corporate Profile, n.d.).

Based on the documentation supplied for fiscal year end 2005, the company had a profit of $351,411. This is a quite a increase from the $275, 761 from the year prior. The difference is the Income tax benefits/expenses incurred during that time period. There was a $91,090 million tax expense at the end of 2005, yet in 2004 there a benefit of $1,012 million. Based on this fact, the net profit for 2005 is actually slightly lower than the profit for 2004.

Their net assets have gone up, but so have their liabilities. Though that would not seem out of the ordinary seeing as you have to spend money to make money. Perhaps, they should work on paying off some of their liabilities with any revenue that the assets are assisting in bringing in.

As of the end of the 2005 fiscal year, their current ratio is at 0.9872, which is a low score. In 2004 their current ratio was at 0.9984 which is not that much a difference, but going in the wrong direction non-the-less. Their cash ratio for 2005 is at 0.2951 while in 2004 it was at 0.0805. This is a massive improvement. So while the amount of liability has gone up, so has their cash, which ends up being a good thing for them.