GB News more than doubled its revenues in the past year to £15.8m but its total losses now top £100m.
The broadcaster decreased its annual losses by a fifth in the year to 31 May 2024.
It made a loss of £33.4m in the 2023/24 financial year, compared to £42.4m the year before.
Its losses since it began setting up ahead of its June 2021 launch now total £105.9m.
GB News revenue was up 136% from £6.7m last year to £15.8m with the growth attributed to “continued audience increases”.
All revenue types were up except for radio, which was down 61% to £51,243 despite continued listenership growth.
Advertising revenue more than doubled (up 111%) to £8.9m. The channel has suffered a boycott from many major advertisers since its launch.
Chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos told a Parliamentary committee last year: “While we have growing audience and our advertising revenue has increased significantly – and it had to because in the early days we didn’t have much – the reality is that we’re looking at all aspects of monetisation… we’re very confident about the future of being self-sufficient financially but we have a lot of work to do.”
Digital revenue also more than doubled last year (up 165%) to £5.8m.
A GB News source told Press Gazette: “As these results show, the channel is recording growth across several areas of the business, and it remains focused on its mission to become the UK’s largest news channel by 2028.”
Some 86% of GB News revenue comes from the UK. Last summer (after the financial year in question ended) the broadcaster began increasing efforts in the US where Press Gazette was told revenues had grown by 500% over the previous 12 months, albeit from a low base.
The company's latest accounts note that because of losses and net liabilities of £109.5m (as of 31 May 2024) GB News is dependent on its investors but that it continues to have "strong support" from them.
The biggest shareholders of GB News are hedge fund entrepreneur Sir Paul Marshall, who also owns Unherd and bought The Spectator last year, and Legatum Ventures Ltd, a company connected to the pro-free market think tank and investment group Legatum.
GB News began its first major round of redundancies, aiming to cut 40 roles, in April 2024 - just before the end of the financial year in question.
However, the accounts show that on average it had a higher employee count in the year to 31 May 2024 than in the year before: 311, up from 295.
In the accounts, Frangopoulos repeated the company's goal to be the UK's largest news channel by 2028. He claimed the audience data is "highly supportive" of this trajectory.
"With television audience share up 53% and radio audience share up 61% year-on-year, audiences across linear platforms again grew strongly in the last year," he wrote.
"To drive this growth, the management continued to evolve the company's programming line-up and adapted to the inevitable challenges faced by the group as it takes market share in a well-established market.
"The company's digital operation also continued its strong growth trajectory, where both the company's owned and operated sites as well as social media remain robust; page views on the group's website and app increased by 41% compared to May last year, whilst reach on Facebook and Youtube grew by 27%, with aggregate subscribers across all the major social media platforms increasing by ∼1.4 million to ∼3.9 million subscribers."
In the 2023/24 financial year GB News launched a paid offering for member-only digital content. It passed 10,000 paid-up memberships in August with price points of £5 (“basic”), £10 (“supporter”) and £20 (“VIP”) a month.
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