Tag Archives: Pearson

FT Group’s digital subscriptions rise by 50 per cent

Financial Times publisher Pearson has reported an increase of 11 per cent in overall sales for its newspaper operation for the first nine months of 2010, according to a Press Association report.

The FT Group, which according to a report by the FT makes up 15 per cent of turnover, also saw digital subscriptions to its content rise by 50 per cent in the first nine months of 2010 to more than 180,000.

FT results: FT.com paid-for subscriptions up 9%

According to parent company Pearson’s preliminary financial results for 2008, released today, the Financial Times’ website saw a 9 per cent growth in paid-for subscribers to 109,609.

Register users – the free-part of the access model – increased from approximately 150,000 at the end of 2007 to 966,000 by the end of last year.

In September last year, FT.com managing director Rob Grimshaw told Journalism.co.uk that the financial crisis had caused an explosion in registrations and subscriptions to the site.

Advertising revenues for FT Publishing as a group fell by 4 per cent, but overall profits for 2008 rose by 13 per cent to £195 million.

“[G]rowth of digital and subscription businesses and strong demand for premium content exceed decline in advertising revenues,” said a release from Pearson.

“At the FT Group, we anticipate continued strong demand for high-quality analysis of global business, finance, politics and economics; a tough year for advertising; strong renewal rates in our subscription businesses; and continued growth at Interactive Data.”

The group’s publishing division posted a 9 per cent increase in sales to £74m (£56m in 2007).

Pearson itself recorded an adjusted operating profit rise of 11 per cent to £762 million in 2008.

Tracking UK newspaper share prices with Twitter

With a little a lot of help from our friends (take a bow Headshift’s Tim Duckett) there’s a new Twitter kid on the block – @jocoukshares.

Following Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press’ exits from the FTSE 250, the aim is to provide almost real-time share price information for the newspaper and magazine publishing groups currently listed on the FTSE.

Below is a key to the company names:

FUTR – Future Publishing

CAU – Centaur

TNI – Trinity Mirror

INM – Independent News & Media

REL – Reed Elsevier

PSON – Pearson

JPR – Johnston Press

DMGT – Daily Mail & General Trust

INF – Informa

NWS – News Corp

Tim’s made stirling progress with setting up feeds of the share prices to Twitter and there’s no reason why this couldn’t be expanded beyond newspapers and mags in the future.

However, suggestions about a ‘front-end’ for the project are welcome. Building a newspaper-share-price-feed-tracking widget will probably be one of my Christmas Eve tasks – any suggestions?

FT sells off German paper to focus on digital strategy

The Financial Times‘ parent company Pearson has agreed to sell its 50 per cent stake in Financial Times Deutschland to publishing firm Gruner + Jahr, stating that the German paper ‘no longer fits’ with their plans to develop digitally.

As part of sale, which is expected to complete by the end of the first quarter, FT will continue to ‘licence’ content to FT Deutschland, a statement from the company said.

“The FT Group is increasingly focussed on the worldwide expansion of the Financial Times and our digital financial information businesses. FT Deutschland no longer fits within that strategy, but we are very pleased to have found such a good home for a great newspaper,” Rona Fairhead, chief executive of the Financial Times Group, said in the release.