Interesting to note amidst a backdrop of job cuts and industry crisis talks that the newspaper industry is still a business – and sometimes still a big money one.
In its annual report released yesterday, publishing group Daily Mail & General Trust announced an operating profit for 2009 of £278 million.
The group’s businesses now make up 73 per cent (£203 million) of this operating profit, with newspaper publishing only accounting for 27 per cent (£75 million). Compare this to 1996 when DMGT’s newspapers made up 86 per cent of this figure.
“My father made a decision some 15 years ago to diversify the group away from the UK newspaper market into other media less dependent on newspapers, advertising and the UK. Given what has happened in the last year, that decision has proved to have been inspired. From next to nothing then, our B2B businesses have this year contributed nearly three quarters of the group’s profit, with over 60 per cent of our profits coming from outside the UK. While some of the diversification has been more successful than others, in total it has been a well executed expansion, largely into the United States, graveyard of so many UK company expansion plans,” said group chairman Viscount Rothermere in a statement.