Cost cuts helped the publisher of the Mail titles significantly grow operating profit at its consumer media titles in the year to the end of September 2024.
DMGT reported operating profit up 34% year on year to £53m on its consumer media business (which includes the Mail titles, Metro, I Paper and New Scientist) on revenue down 2% to £613m.
Print circulation declines are largely being offset by cover price rises, print subscriptions are growing and digital advertising growth is more than cancelling out print advertising decline.
Overall revenue at DMGT was up 11% to £1.1bn and the company also went from a £13m pre-tax loss in 2023 to a pre-tax profit of £6m in the year to 30 September 2024, according to DMGT’s annual report.
The company’s profit after tax increased from £4m to £62m and its adjusted operating profit was up 60% to £87m (improving the profit margin from 5% to 8%).
The UAE-headquartered events and exhibitions business now makes up a quarter of DMGT’s total revenue, compared to 16% a year earlier. It saw 67% year-on-year revenue growth in 2024 to £272m.
Revenue from the property information division, which includes US-based data and analytics company Trepp and UK-based hybrid estate agency Yopa, was up 4% to £219m.
Consumer media, which includes the Mail, Metro, The i Paper and New Scientist, remains the biggest part of the business.
Cover price increases were said to have largely offset the decline in print sales volumes. Overall circulation revenues were down by 2% to £242m but print subscription revenues saw growth. Lord Rothermere said in his strategic report accompanying the figures that this reflects “the continuing trend amongst readers to subscribe to the titles”.
Digital advertising revenues were up 5% to £174m, offsetting a 2% drop in print ad revenues to £106m. Ad prices for the Mail and The i Paper were down because of their circulation drops but Metro, which has kept its free distribution steady at just below one million, saw revenue growth following a restructure in 2023.
Advertising (print and digital) went down as a proportion of DMGT revenue in 2024, from 28% to 25%. Print advertising fell from 11% to 10%.
"Profitability benefitted from cost rationalisation in the print businesses," the report said of the media business.
The Mail titles have been undergoing a transition to a digital-first newsroom over the past few years, with redundancies largely on the print side, the final stage of which began on Thursday.
[Read more: Major job cuts at Mail titles in final stage of digital-first transition]
The consumer media business had exceptional operating costs and impairment costs of £93m including £36m in closure costs for its print sites in Essex and Yorkshire as DMGT combined its print operations with News UK. There was also £30m in goodwill impairment.
Growth in the events business was put down to "continued recovery" in the sector and "rapid development of the Saudi Arabian events market" as well as expansion in events it manages for third-parties such as a section of annual United Nations climate change conference COP28, although there is expected to be less revenue from these in the 2025 financial year. Most of DMGT's own annual events take place in the Middle East.
Based on where customers (or news consumers) are located, 58% of DMGT's revenues are from the UK, 16% from the US and 26% from the rest of the world. Divided by where DMGT's businesses are based, 70% of revenues come from the UK with 7% from the US and 22% from elsewhere.
DMGT employed 4,307 people on average in 2024, of which 2,589 were in consumer media - a slight dip from 2,608 the year before. Some 1,110 were in property information and 566 were in events and exhibitions.
The highest-paid director, likely to be chairman Lord Rothermere who took control of the business by de-listing it in 2021, received total remuneration of £4m in 2024, down from £6.5m the year before.
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