Egmont reports 'record' revenue and profit growth

Scandinavian media company Egmont, which owns children’s book specialist Egmont Publishing, has reported “record” revenue and profit growth for 2018.

The group said revenue went up by €900,000 (£769,000) to €1.6bn (£1.37bn), thanks to “growth areas in e-commerce, gaming, marketing services, and TV streaming, and by outstanding content in movies, books and magazines”. The firm’s total business activity, including shares in other companies, generated revenue of €1.9bn (£1.6bn).

President and c.e.o. Steffen Kragh said: “Egmont is home to ambitious and creative people with the right technological and commercial skills for us to succeed in building new business and developing our core activities.

“This is important, because we - like the rest of the media industry - are under considerable pressure in some areas. Our key focus is on becoming even more user and data driven to ensure that we are attractive to the modern media consumer, while retaining our publishing core and our vision of being the master storyteller. I’m proud of the excellent content we created in 2018 and pleased that our new businesses have grown strong. We expect our strategy to bring further growth in the coming years.”

Pre-tax profits grew by around €30m (£25.6m) to €190m (£162m) over the 12 months. The group also gave €13m (£11.1m) to charitable initiatives in 2018.

The Egmont Publishing division, which includes the company’s UK business, hit revenues of €522m (£446m) last year, up 3.4% from 2017, but operating profit was down 21% to €26m (£22.2m).

The company said Egmont Publishing’s profitability was strong in the Nordic region, but a number of other markets were hit by the decline in the market for print media. Egmont Publishing has a portfolio of seven Nordic e-commerce companies which saw substantial growth in 2018 and generated combined revenue of €320m (£274m).