Following the revelation that Fairfax will incur a near $1bn impairment in its publishing segment, billionaire investor Alex Waislitz has reportedly pressed CEO Greg Hywood to abandon weekday print editions.

A leaked email from Waislitz has urged the Fairfax boss to shut down weekday print editions of mastheads such as SMH and The Age ‘sooner rather than later’. 

The email, published in Fairfax rival The Australian, from Waislitz to Hywood reads, “The strategic steps just announced will hopefully pave the way for the move to full digital publication on weekdays – something which is in the best interests of the group and its shareholders in this digital age and is therefore something which should happen sooner rather than later and with as short a transition as possible.”

On Monday Fairfax Media revealed it expects to log a $989m impairment relating to its publishing segment, prompting speculation it would move to ditch print editions of its newspaper titles. 

Fairfax has warned investors that impairments of $484.9m for Australian Metro Media, $408.8m for Australian Community Media and $95.3m for New Zealand would be recorded in its full-year results statement to be made on August 10.  

However, all was rosy for Fairfax’s real estate service Domain, which logged a 45 per cent revenue spike for full year 2015, prompting Fairfax to create a separate Domain Group segment.

Hywood says, “We continue to invest in Domain to make it stronger and extend its business model beyond listing to capture the immense opportunity in the broader real estate ecosystem.” 

Waislitz has told The Oz, “This is still a group with approximately $300m in EBITDA and Domain contributes a significant portion of that, so it makes sense to realign the business to enable for better transparency and valuation of Domain.”

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