The Sun made an operating loss of £65.4m in the year to the end of June 2013 despite a £20m increase in revenue to £514.3m – according to figures filed yesterday with Companies House.
The UK’s best-selling national daily newspaper benefited in turnover terms from the launch of The Sun on Sunday in February 2012, and from cover-price rises on the Monday to Friday edition.
But parent company News Group Newspapers, part of News UK, continues to pay the price of the hacking scandal. In 2012 it made an operating loss of £272m.
The pre-tax loss for last year stood at £75m.
News Group revealed that last year one-off charges relating to the hacking scandal, and inquiries into payments to public officials which have seen more than 20 Sun journalists arrested, cost the company £88m. This compared to a cost of £288.1m in 2012.
In 2012 the company also wrote off £160m as the value of the publishing rights for the News of the World.
The Sun publisher spent £10.3m on settling civil claims brought by people whose phones were hacked by the News of the World last year, compared to £17.5m on this in 2012. It also spent a further £50.1m on its own legal fees last year
The Sun had redundancy costs of £11.7m (compared with £9.1m in 2012) and it spent £12.2m on compensation to directors for loss of office.
The number of editorial staff on The Sun increased from 467 to 486 last following investment in the website and The Sun on Sunday.
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