STV has underlined its improved financial strength by shortening the repayment plan on its legacy pension schemes from 18 to 11 years.
The broadcaster will raise its annual payments from this year's £5.5 million to between £7m and £7.75m from next year to 2025, after agreeing a deal with the trustees of its television and publishing final salary pension schemes.
Rob Woodward, STV's chief executive, said: "The pension scheme valuation agreement provides certainty to both the group and the schemes' trustees and demonstrates the continued commitment of the group to support the schemes."
Jane Anscombe, analyst at Edison Research, said the deal was "a reflection of the company's much greater financial strength than that at the time of the previous valuation" while the increased payments were already in analysts' estimates.
Three years ago STV cut the liabilities of the Caledonian Publishing Pension Scheme, acquired during its ownership of The Herald and Evening Times newspapers, by £5m after a mortality research exercise.
The other scheme is the Scottish & Grampian Television Retirement Benefits Scheme, and their combined deficits have narrowed from £135m at the start of 2012 to £83m on March 31 this year, from a combination of increases in asset value and the deficit funding payments.
But on the IAS 19 basis of valuation, which uses corporate bond yields rather than gilts to project liabilities, the schemes show a modest surplus of £1.3m, as shown in the STV accounts.
Ms Anscombe said: "The next triennial valuation will be in 2015 and if real interest rates rise (as we expect) then the pension funding deficit will fall again."
She also expects the group's net debt to fall further in 2015.
Shares have been on a strong run but closed down 8p, or two per cent, at 360p.
Edison yesterday also published its annual outlook for STV, increasing its profit estimates.
Ms Anscombe said: "STV is capitalising on a favourable advertising backdrop, strong brand identity and the high level of interest in Scotland with the upcoming referendum as well as the Commonwealth Games."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article