Telegraph Group makes £12.1m operating loss

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 08-Nov-06, 08:30

LONDON - The Telegraph Group made an operating loss of £12.1m in 2005 on the back of the £45.8m cost of relocating offices and restructuring the company, while its ad revenues fell 4%.

The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph were bought by the Barclay brothers in June 2004 and have been undergoing a long and painful process of cost cutting and reshaping as a multimedia publisher.

Restructuring and redundancy costs in 2005 were £13.6m, according to accounts filed with Companies House. The company's staff numbered 1,158 in 2004, but was cut to 1,071 in 2005.

Those costs were outweighed by a £32.2m charge for moving offices from Canary Wharf to new premises in London's Victoria, complete with a multimedia newsroom with plans for journalists producing video and audio as well as written reports.

Excluding the one-off costs, the company made an operating profit of £33.7m, up 1.8%.

It made a pre-tax profit of £5.7m with the one-off costs taken into account, thanks mostly to a £17.5m gain on the sale of The Spectator to another Barclay-owned company, the May Corporation.

Turnover was up 0.4% to £322.8m. Although ad revenues were down 4%, circulation revenues increased 2% and other revenues such as new media and enterprise activities increased 9%.

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