Regional publisher Local World saw its profits rise by 12pc last year as it reduced staffing levels by 240, according to its latest results.
The company’s results for 2014. which have been filed at Companies House, show that an increase in digital revenues of 22pc to £24.6m helped the publisher increase its adjusted profits to £43.6m.
Print revenues saw an 8pc decline to £131.5m, but still generated almost 60pc of the group’s overall revenues of £221m.
The increase in profits came as the company cut its headcount by 240 to 2,498 last year, with the wage bill decreasing from £85.3m to £80.1m.
It means that shareholders Trinity Mirror have gained £8.71m from their 19.8pc stake in Local World while DMGT, which owns 38.7pc of the company, has netted £16.88m.
According to the results, Local World’s total revenues fell 4pc to £221m as a result of “continuing downward print circulation and print advertising trends.”
The publisher’s pre-tax profits were £15.8m for 2014, up from £12.7m in 2013.
Last year, Local World paid out £2.59m in severance payments to staff, which was down from £3.67m in 2013.
The report said that in January this year, Local World paid back its existing loan of £10m and signed a new £50m four-year bank loan.
It added Local World is aiming to transform its business model and is investing in new content management and commercial IT systems.
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An average payout per redundancy of £10,791 – quite a cheap exercise for them!
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Good to see somebody bucking the trend.
63% on print revenue,and a good profit of over £43 million proves Armageddon is some way off.
It is sad to see redundancies but there is still a huge majority in work.
Keep the ads rolling in together with a strong commercial ethic from all the workforce and the future is a lot brighter than all the gloomy ones have forecast.
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Great performance from the employees of a fit-for-purpose company. Those who have most directly helped to create this profit for senior executives and shareholders should be in a line for a healthy bonus as reward and to incentivise them to do even better next year (that’s how it works, isn’t it?).
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Why do you persist in using their terminology? A ‘reduction in headcount’ – that’s redundancy for some very talented, dedicated and long-serving members of staff.
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Redundancy used to be called getting the sack or boot, RedundantHack. but euphemism rules these days. I agree totally with your assessment, however.
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Not just redundancy.
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Pleased to note that my £7k contributed the LW’s £3.67m redundancy pay-outs in 2013.
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Great performance for David Montgomery and the Local World shareholders only. The troops toiling out here in the newsrooms know the reality of how these profits have been achieved.
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