Regional publisher Newsquest has recouped the losses it suffered during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic by posting a £45m profit in 2021.

The US-owned publishing group reported a loss of £45.1m in 2020 but bounced back with an almost-identical pre-tax profit of 45.2m last year.

However the profits surge came on the back of an overall reduction of staff numbers from 1,820 to 1,489, including a drop of 72 in the number of editorial jobs from 643 to 571.

Revenues at the group, now the UK’s second biggest regional publisher with more than 120 news brands, grew bv 1.6pc from £139.7m to £142m in the year to 31 December.

In the report, which is available to view on the Companies House website, finance director Paul Hunter said 2021 had been a “resilient” year despite the final Covid-19 lockdown in the first quarter and higher newsprint prices in the second half of the year.

He added: “Despite these inflationary head winds, the company remains positive about the opportunities for 2022 given the resilience of the business and skills of its teams to drive the necessary audience growth and deliver the value and quality response sought by our advertisers.”

Paul, pictured, said that in order to remain competitive in challenging times, the company would “continue to re-engineer the business to take out inefficient costs.”

The impact of the war in Ukraine, particularly on energy prices, was continuing to put “significant inflationary pressure” on the business in 2022, he added.

Since the period covered by the report, Newsquest has purchased fellow regional publisher Archant although the deal is still subject to ratification with Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries ssaying she was “minded” to intervene over plurality concerns.

Said Paul: “The acquisition provides the opportunity to achieve more economies of scale and in so doing provide a more sustainable future for the Archant local news brands and their local journalism.

“The Newsquest overarching goal is to empower its local communities to thrive – we do this by providing a sustainable model for trusted local journalism and providing local businesses with highly effective advertising solutions.

“The successful execution of this strategy is expected to enable the company to continue its evolution from a traditional print media business to a digitally led one.”

In the report, Paul also addressed payments from the Google News Showcase and Facebook News, which saw the tech giants paying publishers for news content.

He said: “The purchases of content by Facebook and Google for their news services that began in 2021 is a positive development, but still only represents a tiny fraction of the value that these tech companies garner from using quality news journalism on their platforms.

“In smaller towns and communities a viable subscription model that can fund quality local journalism in the long term remains hard to envisage.”

The report also showed that the £45.2m profi in 2021 included £10.7m from the sale of offices following the move to hybrid working.