It is probably a little premature, but here is the corporate obituary for Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood, who is well placed to go out on a high after overseeing five years of gruelling structural change.
He is one of the few people to have taken a traditional media company from burning platform to profitable survivor.
In a sector characterised by low barriers to entry and relentless downward pressure on revenue, Fairfax's recent performance has been exceptional.
The proposed spin-off of the real estate listings business Domain is arguably the high point of Hywood's corporate career.
Domain, a business that barely existed in 2011 when Hywood took over as CEO, is now headed for a separate stockmarket listing with a valuation of at least $2 billion. It will remain up to 70 per cent owned by Fairfax Media.
Unlike his peers in free-to-air television who allowed their incumbency to breed arrogance and complacency, Hywood has extended Fairfax's capabilities well beyond newspaper publishing.
His successful expansion into a range of digital businesses and video streaming are in sharp contrast to the multiple strategic blunders of his predecessors. He is one of a handful of journalists who made the transition from writing commentary to running a company.
The key to his success was aggressive operational management, which started with a loss in 2012 of $2.7 billion. That red ink was a function of the single largest cost-cutting campaign in the Australian media, including the loss of 1900 jobs.
Cost cutting has become business as usual at Fairfax. In the latest half costs were down in the publishing businesses by between 9 and 12 per cent.
When Hywood joined the board as a non-executive director in 2010 the company had 12,000 employees. It now has about 6000. Basically to survive in traditional media a company needs to shed about 20 per cent of its workforce every year.
The business Hywood inherited when he stepped from the board into the CEO's chair was the equivalent to several separate vertically-integrated publishing companies run under different mastheads.
One of his first actions was to close two of the most modern printing plants in the world in 2012. By shutting down the presses at Tullamarine in Melbourne and Chullora in Sydney, Fairfax exited $600 million of capital investment and replaced it with $40 million of extra capital investment at regional printing sites in Ballarat and North Richmond.
When he took over Hywood thought he could cut about $200 million to $300 million in annual costs. The final figure is in excess of $500 million.
The cost-cutting inevitably had a negative impact on staff morale. It is a tribute to the commitment and resilience of the company's employees that they have been able to maintain the highest standards of excellence throughout the past five years of upheaval, including waves of redundancies.
Rising digital subscriptions at the three main mastheads, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review, point to a renaissance in quality journalism.
New Fairfax director Mickie Rosen told Hywood on Wednesday she thinks the arrival of President Donald Trump has prompted a resurgence of interest in quality journalism.
A feature of traditional media companies that failed to transform themselves, and there are many, was lack of revenue growth. At Fairfax, Hywood sold non-core assets to reduce debt and fund increased investment in the real estate listings business Domain. Even today it is the strength of the Fairfax balance sheet which has given the company the flexibility to explore the Domain spin-off.
Domain owes its success to two things: The power of The Age and SMH brands and Hywood's early realisation that Fairfax had no choice but to buy control of Antony Catalano's Metro Media Publishing.
It was loyal readers of The Age and the SMH that gave Domain a strong market position in key suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne. This allowed Domain to grab market share in the face of stiff competition from the incumbent, the News Corp-controlled REA Group.
Buying MMP was a no-brainer because it virtually "owned" the real estate agents who advertised in The Age.
REA remains the market leader in real estate listings with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $200 million in the six months to December 31. Domain had EBITDA of $57 million in the same period.
Domain has plenty of opportunity to grab more market share and will be treated by the market as a growth stock.
Catalano's continuation as CEO of Domain will be welcomed by fund managers. He is one of those executives liked for his entrepreneurial drive.
REA's market dominance gives Catalano plenty of incentive to improve every aspect of the Domain offering. REA has twice the amount of monthly traffic, its users spend seven times longer on the site and its page views are five times those of Domain, according to REA's latest results.
In hindsight, Hywood's decision to sell out of New Zealand online commerce platform TradeMe and dump Fairfax's stake in accommodation website Stayz in favour of investment in Domain was a good use of shareholders' funds.
It is possible Hywood will face his toughest test yet during the tail-end of his tenure as CEO.
Once Domain is spun off into a separate company Hywood will have to find new growth options for the remaining business, which will comprise digital and print publishing, Macquarie radio and video streaming through Stan, a joint venture with Nine Entertainment.
Stan's success – it now has 700,000 subscribers – is a tribute to the brains trust at Nine who dreamed up the idea, and the boring predictability of free-to-air TV.
One reason why the $10 a month subscriptions to Stan soared over the December and January holiday period is because the TV stations were asleep. Apart from live sport, the TV networks ran the usual low-quality summer programming.
Hywood says the Fairfax publishing business has the advantage of being in the black. Its metro newspapers division earns a profit margin of 10 per cent, its regional newspapers earn a profit margin of 20 per cent, and its New Zealand business has a margin of 16 per cent.
But print advertising revenue went backwards at double-digit rates in the December half. That is driven by the shift by advertisers to targeted campaigns using Facebook and Google.
Their digital ad revenue is growing 35 to 40 per cent a year. This is having an effect on all traditional media with the exception of outdoor advertising, which is growing because of the digitisation of billboards.
Once Domain is separately listed, Hywood and the board of Fairfax, led by Nick Falloon, could face an entirely new regulatory landscape if there is reform of media laws. That may open up merger opportunities, which will no doubt be flogged hard by investment bankers.
In the tight-knit, parochial local media sector, the most common phrase among CEOs is that "everyone is talking to everyone".
That can lead to some bizarre ideas being taken seriously, such as Fairfax possibly merging its journalism businesses with Nine Entertainment. It is hard to see two challenged businesses benefiting from being under the same roof.
