The Irish Times returned to profit in 2023 as group revenues climbed 5 per cent to €115 million, exceptional costs shrank and it made gains on its investment portfolio.
Accounts for The Irish Times DAC show that it made a profit before tax of €2.1 million in 2023, which followed a pretax loss of €5 million the year before.
The group operating loss after exceptional items narrowed to about €643,000, which compares to a figure of €2.65 million figure recorded in 2022.
The €5.4 million rise in turnover secured last year came after third-party print contract revenue increased 39 per cent and digital subscription revenue advanced 14 per cent.
The group now has about 143,000 paid subscriptions, including home delivery, after the growth seen in 2023 continued into 2024.
“We have made good progress over the course of the last year,” said group managing director Deirdre Veldon.
This was notwithstanding the “very many challenges” that face the media sector, which includes ongoing declines in print circulation and print advertising, as well as technology giants’ dominance of the online advertising market.
“Our strategy has been about maximising our digital revenues, primarily from subscriptions,” said Ms Veldon.
The group’s aim over time is to evolve to a business model where more than 50 per cent of its revenues come from digital sources, up from the current share of about 25 per cent, she added.
Despite a fall in circulation across the newspaper market, group print circulation revenues rose 4 per cent last year after the Government’s move to cut the VAT rate on newspapers and their digital editions to 0 per cent.
The company’s newsprint (paper), energy and professional fees costs fell in 2023, but this was offset by increases in payroll, technology, home delivery and newspaper production costs.
Cutting these costs has been “a key area of focus” for the group in 2024, a year in which it launched a voluntary parting programme “to target a reduction in headcount and allow for reinvestment in key digital roles”.
The accounts show that Ms Veldon and Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, the editor of The Irish Times, were each paid a salary of €275,000 last year.
The chairman of The Irish Times DAC, Shay Garvey, received €67,000, while the chairman of The Irish Times Trust, John Hegarty, received €31,000.
The group’s investment portfolio gained €2.3 million last year, recovering the majority of the €2.7 million losses recorded in 2022, while group net cash stood at €16.6 million as of the end of 2023, down from €19.7 million a year earlier.
The group, which employed an average of 859 people last year, owns The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner in Cork, property website MyHome.ie, several regional news titles and a majority share in radio station WLR FM.
It previously owned a majority share in the southeast station Beat 102-103, which it sold to Bauer Media Audio in August this year, while it also announced a plan in August to wind down The Irish Times Training subsidiary.
Since the end of 2023, the group has acquired RIP.ie, which the directors said would allow it to increase its digital footprint.
It has also bought the 50 per cent interest in Gloss Publications it did not already own. The company publishes the Gloss, a magazine distributed monthly with The Irish Times, and Ms Veldon said there was now an opportunity to distribute it with other titles within the group and include it in a digital subscription bundle.
The directors’ report identifies the unknown impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the industry as one of the key risks to the group.
Ms Veldon said the advent of AI posed a “potential existential threat” to the business.
“Publishers around the world are really worried about the threat that AI poses. They are aware that large language models are using their content to feed their services and replicating their content without payment or attribution and that has the potential ultimately to destroy traditional media,” she said.
“But we do believe we have a good future in advance of us, so long as we tap into the needs of our audiences and the strength of our brands.”
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