February 20, 2014

Business publisher Centaur reduces pre-tax losses as it moves ‘away from product to portfolio management’

Business publisher Centaur this morning reported revenue for the second half of 2013 up 8 per cent to £32.7m but a pre-tax loss of £2.9m.

This loss figure was an improvement on the pre-tax loss of £5m in the same period a year earlier.

The EBITDA profit figure was up 7 per cent to £3.1m.

Centaur’s portfolio of business media brands includes: Marketing Week, Creative Review, Money Marketing, The Lawyer and Econsultancy.

Andria Vidler, who became chief executive in November, said: "We have a number of strong brands, deep content, a talented team and considerable technical expertise. We aim to be the first place customers turn for information and insight and to interact with their peers.

"To deliver this we are refocusing – using our own resources – and placing our audiences at the heart of everything we do. This will enable us to prioritise market facing and commercial initiatives, and to harness our combined strengths across the business to drive revenue generation and value creation."

Centaur said one of its aims is to "move away from product to portfolio management focused on its key chosen markets".

Centaur said that total advertising revenue was £11.3m (compared with £11.6m in the same period a year earlier. Digital advertising was up 9 per cent, accounting for 48 per cent ofthe total, paid-for content revenue was said to be up 9 per cent to £10.6m and events revenue was up 20 per cent o £10.4m.

Read the full interim results statement here.

Topics in this article : Centaur Media