Dennis profits boosted to £2m despite Maxim sales decline

by Joe Gill, Brand Republic 30-Oct-07, 09:25

LONDON - Dennis Publishing's pre-tax profits have risen from £361,000 to £2.06m, helped by the success of its news title The Week, although turnover fell from £61.7m to £60.2m in the year to December.

According to the Financial Times, profits from The Week, which Dennis acquired 100% control of in January, made up for declining sales of its men's magazine Maxim.

Dennis paid £1.38m for the remaining 3% stake in The Week in January, after spending £9.1m on a 20% stake last year. The Week has enjoyed 18 quarters of circulation growth on the back of extensive promotional campaigns.

The Week, which has over 143,700 subscribers according to the August ABCs, slashed its cover price to £1.50 from £2.35 earlier this month, in a bid to boost newsstand sales. As part of the push, Asda and Tesco are promoting The Week in stores this month.

The Week's sister title The Quarterly has signed up a raft of new luxury advertisers for its autumn issue, including Louis Vuitton, Gieves & Hawkes and Range Rover.

Meanwhile, reflecting declining sales across the men’s magazine sector, Maxim's print circulation continued to drop in the last set of ABC figures to 107,687 copies, down 18.1% over six months and 26.3% over the year.

However, its online monthly unique user figures rose 73% to 851,739 according to Dart figures unaudited by ABC Electronic.

Dennis released results from Companies House yesterday, and said profitability had grown "significantly" for its online men's titles, including Monkey and Maxim.com.

Maxim appointed a new editor Michael Donlevy, former deputy editor of Dennis’s Men's Fitness, last month.