Future has once again shrugged off the difficulties facing magazine publishers, delivering a sharp rise in annual revenues and profits and predicting results for the current year will top forecasts.
The UK-listed company, whose titles include Marie Claire, TechRadar and Horse & Hound, said on Tuesday that it expected results for the year to September 2022 to be “materially above” existing estimates.
The earnings upgrade follows a series of acquisitions by Future, which expanded its interests in personal finance in August with the purchase of MoneyWeek and Kiplinger. It also purchased news title The Week as part of the £300 million (€354 million) deal.
The results will help reassure investors in the company, whose shares have lost momentum in recent weeks but were up 16 per cent in early Tuesday trading. They had been down 9 per cent in the past month before the results were announced.
Future’s titles that target niche consumer hobbies won readers during lockdown restrictions, and chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne has pursued a strategy of generating online commissions from ecommerce.
A jump in both digital advertising and ecommerce sales helped revenues in the year to September 2021 rise 79 per cent to £607m while pre-tax profits more than doubled to £107.8 million.
The board of Future, whose other publications include Guitar World and Country Life, raised the dividend for the year 75 per cent to 2.8p a share. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021
