The media group Mediahuis achieved – for the first time – almost – 1 billion euros in turnover in 2020, mainly thanks to acquisitions in Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Mediahuis remained on a takeover hunt in the corona year 2020. It went shopping in Luxembourg (‘Wort’, the country’s largest newspaper) and the Netherlands (Noordelijke Dagbladcombinatie, a group of regional titles), and could count on a full year’s contribution from INM, the Irish newspaper group that took over in mid-2019. All of this is reflected in the figures. Mediahuis is boosting its turnover significantly, from 857.9 million euros to 990.5 million euros.
Mediahuis has almost become a billion-dollar company and is therefore in the slipstream of DPG Media, the other major Belgian media mogul behind brands such as HLN and VTM. It already generated a turnover of 1.6 billion euros in 2019. That company did not yet provide exact figures for 2020, but because DPG Media took over the Dutch magazines from Sanoma in the meantime, the turnover could end around 2 billion euros.
Due to the corona crisis, advertisers kept their finger on the knot, especially in the first lockdown. That is also felt at Mediahuis. The company does not provide disaggregated figures, but cites ad revenue declines of 10 to 20 percent, “depending on the brand and the market.” These are figures that are roughly in line with the market. Telenet previously indicated that the decline in advertising and other sales at its TV subsidiary SBS was 14 percent. A joint advertising agency with Mediahuis, Telenet and Proximus should turn the tide.
Digital subscribers
The group said it was able to compensate ‘part’ of the loss of advertising revenue with the sale of digital subscriptions. The Mediahuis group has 1.7 million subscribers. One in three subscribers reads digitally, often in combination with a paper weekend newspaper. In 2019 this was one in four. In Ireland, Mediahuis introduced a paid online offer for the first time in February 2020: 30,000 people are already paying for the news site independent.ie.
Key figures Mediahuis
2020 turnover: 990.5 million euros (857.9 million in 2019)
Net result 2020: 58.6 million euros (14.7 million in 2019)
Turnover: 49 percent in the Netherlands, 28 percent in Belgium, 18 percent in Ireland, 5 percent in Luxembourg
Mediahuis is convinced that, despite all acquisitions, it can start in 2021 ‘virtually debt-free’. It has come a long way there. The group’s leverage already decreased from 1.7 to 0.4 between the end of 2019 and 2020. At the end of 2020, there was still a net debt of 66 million euros in the books. Mediahuis captures added value this year through the sale of the Keesing puzzle books (Denksport), in which it had a 30 percent interest. ‘Our forecasts looked less good in the spring of 2020 due to corona, but we ended the year with a stronger financial position than ever’, CFO Kristiaan De Beukelaer concludes.