STV chief executive Rob Woodward has defended his £2.3 million pay packet, highlighting the company’s strong performance and declaring that a remuneration cap had ensured executives could not receive “excessive” award packages.

Speaking after the company’s annual general meeting in Glasgow, Mr Woodward said: “Over the last three year period we’ve been the fourth best performing stock on the FTSE all-share index. We’ve generated approximately £150m of value for our shareholders.”

He added: “As a result of this, a particular incentive put in place was triggered, so it’s a one-off event approved by our shareholders to reward performance, and that’s what we’ve delivered.

“There was a cap put in place to ensure we couldn’t get what would be seen as obscene awards.”

Without the aggregate cap on a three-year Value Creation Plan (VCP) incentive Mr Woodward would have received around £3.7m. Linked to share performance, participants in the VCP would receive an allocated share of five per cent of the aggregate value created above a threshold price of £1.50 and 7.5 per cent of the value above £2.

At the start of this period STV’s share price was £1. When the period ended in December the price was £4.60.

STV’s turnaround was attributed to the executive team getting the business back on its feet and implementing a growth strategy that took advantage of its position as a Scotland-only broadcaster, combining TV with streaming and digital services.

At the AGM, the remuneration packages for all executives were approved by more than 99 per cent of shareholders.

STV said trading in Q1 was in line with expectations. In Q2, STV national revenues are expected to be flat whilst regional revenues are expected to be up 12 per cent.

For the first half of the 2016 financial year, total airtime revenues are expected to be up two per cent, driven by the strong performance of regional airtime revenues, which are expected to be up 23 per cent. National airtime revenues are expected to be down one per cent.

The company’s city TV channels will be bolstered this year, with channels in Dundee, Ayr and Aberdeen joining Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Mr Woodward said: “With city TV we’re appealing to new advertisers because the price point is so much lower. We’re competing with media we wouldn’t normally have competed with and targeting a larger market.”

When all five channels are broadcasting, they will reach 80 per cent of the Scottish population.

“What we’ve shown is that the broadcast market is extremely resilient,” added Mr Woodward.

Another area of strength at the company is digital, where revenues are up 25 per cent in the first half of the year, a rate that is expected to be maintained in the year ahead. Mr Woodward said that in time, he expected the delivery of digital services – which currently have 1.5 million users – to match its broadcast audience of four million.

“STV Player viewing is currently incremental to our broadcast output,” he said. “In time, more people will migrate some of their viewing from broadcast on to the player – but it’s a good problem to have and there’s lot of growth to come before we reach that point.”

There was a further boost for the company as it announced Sky had recommissioned a second series (eight episodes) of STV Productions’ documentary series Prison: First & Last 24 Hours.