Mediahuis, the Belgian publisher of the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, has reported a 14 per cent rise in revenues to €1.13 billion for 2021, with the news group increasing its digital subscriber tally by 20 per cent and seeing a recovery in advertising after a slow start.
Mediahuis Ireland, which was rebranded from Independent News & Media (INM) last May, experienced "good growth", its parent company said, and now has 50,000 digital subscribers, up 60 per cent from 30,000 at the end of the 2020, the year it first introduced subscriptions.
Independent.ie accounts for more than 43,000 of these subscribers, it added.
Single copy sales of printed newspapers remained “under pressure” due to ongoing Covid restrictions, it said. This was primarily felt in its daily titles.
“Thanks to major editorial efforts, the weekend editions, particularly, continued to yield strong results,” the company said.
Mediahuis, which also publishes the Sunday World, the Belfast Telegraph, the Herald and a number of regional titles in Ireland, described its launch of a new Northern Ireland edition of the Sunday Independent as "notable" in a time of declining print volumes.
“The new edition fills the gap for readers in Northern Ireland who previously hadn’t had an Irish Sunday broadsheet informing them of what’s happening in their part of the island,” Mediahuis said.
Podcast audience
The number of podcast episodes listened to by its audience doubled for the second consecutive year across its various markets, it said, citing the Indo Daily podcast and the Sunday World’s Crime World podcast as part of this growth.
The group, which also operates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, posted earnings before tax, interest and write-offs of €215.8 million, up almost 26 per cent, and an operating profit of €166 million, up 36 per cent. Its "net result" doubled to €117.3 million.
The rise in operating profit was partly due to the integration of Mediahuis Luxembourg and Mediahuis Noord into the group.
"In the past year, which was once again marked by Covid, Mediahuis proved its strength as a group. All our titles grew digitally as a result of a sustained focus on independent journalism and offering a strong digital news experience," said Mediahuis group chief executive Gert Ysebaert.
The Antwerp-headquartered news group ended the year debt-free, prompting its chief financial officer Kristiaan De Beukelaer to hail it as an "outstanding year" for the company.
“After years of building and investing the group’s strategy translated into rock-solid results: we far exceeded the one billion euro revenue mark and achieved an operating margin of almost 15 per cent. What makes me especially happy is that, despite our rapid growth, we were able to finish the year debt-free and look towards the future with an exceptionally strong balance sheet.”
Subscribers
The 20 per cent increase in digital subscriptions across the four countries saw its total number of subscribers grow 3 per cent. The group retains a high print readership, with 38 per cent of subscribers reading digitally or using a combination of print and digital.
It attributed growth in advertising revenue in 2021 – which included a “strong result” for Mediahuis Ireland – to both market recovery from the summer onwards and the development of new digital advertising products.
Its investment policy last year, meanwhile, focused on expanding the position of Mediahuis Ventures in the education and media technology market and the group's expansion into Germany.
Near the end of 2021 Mediahuis reached an agreement on the acquisition of the German media group Aachener Verlagsgesellschaft. The acquisition, which was completed last month, marks its first step into the German market.
