Scottish media group DC Thomson & Co Ltd increased its sales last year despite ongoing challenges in the publishing sector.
The family-owned firm owns newspapers The Courier and Evening Telegraph in Dundee, The Press and Journal and The Evening Express in Aberdeen and The Sunday Post.
Its large portfolio of magazine titles includes The People’s Friend, My Weekly, The Scots Magazine, Puzzler, Stylist and comic The Beano.
Other company interests include contract printing, gift products through the Wild & Wolf brand, genealogy business Find My Past and data storage specialist Brightsolid.
Newly published accounts, for the year ending March 31 2019, show the firm’s underlying sales rose by 5.4% to £201.8 million. The group recorded a pre-tax profit of £21.1m.
During the year, the group acquired Colchester-based magazine group Aceville, which has more than 40 titles, and two radio stations.
The firm said its media business had a “strong” year despite operating in challenging markets.
“Newspapers have had a successful period, with The Press and Journal and The Courier topping the table as the largest-selling regional daily newspapers in the UK,” the firm said.
“Overall, newspaper circulation revenues were £33.4m, a 2.2% drop on 2018 while advertising sales fell by 7.6%.
“Magazine sales for the year were £46.1m. This increase of £3.6m was driven by revenues from the newly acquired Aceville stable.
“DC Thomson believes in the longer-term future of the media business, evidenced by recent launches and acquisitions.
“These acquisitions have added to DC Thomson Media’s local radio portfolio with Original 106 and Kingdom FM joining Wave FM and largely mirroring the geographical footprint of the daily newspapers.”
In April, DC Thomson acquired PSP Ltd which runs a number of leisure and sports related events in Scotland and publishes golf magazine Bunkered.
The company said its puzzle magazines had been “resilient” . Puzzler Media continues to be the UK’s market leader with a 47% share.
Wild & Wolf, which earns 70% of its revenues overseas, saw sales grow by 13% while cloud services firm Brightsolid picked up new business worth £1.7m.
“With state-of-the-art data centres and strong competencies in both private and public cloud services, the Brightsolid business is well positioned to deliver hybrid cloud managed services to the Scottish market,” the firm added.
Find My Past continues to invest in its archive, with work under way to digitise the UK 1921 Census – an important national collection of almost 38 million names that offers a picture of life in the UK just after the First World War.
Meanwhile The Beano comic, which celebrated its 80th birthday, grew its sales by 10% and sold a children’s live action show to Sky TV.