3. Position
Earnings performance
In 2022, dpa developed largely in line with expectations and even posted slight gains in some business areas. A large part of the revenue growth came from the merger of Zentralbild into the dpa parent company.
With a net profit for the year of 1.2 million euros, the forecast was only just missed, although this was based on a 2.0 million euros lower budgeted figure for the special allocation to the dpa provident fund. Without this effect, the result would have been correspondingly higher.
The turnover of dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH increased by 2.2 million euros or 2.2% to 103.2 million euros in 2022. This means that the forecast figure was achieved despite the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which were still being felt in some areas. The main influencing factors were the merger of the photo agency Zentralbild GmbH (Zentralbild for short) into dpa, noticeable revenue growth in the non-media sector, and increased cost reimbursements from services for dpa subsidiaries.
Despite continued declining circulation figures in the print sector, it was possible to keep the revenues of the traditional news services largely stable, albeit with slight shifts within the services, not least due to the ongoing conversion of customers to the new pricing model. Foreign-language news services also generated slight growth again, following a decline in the previous year. Similarly, the profile service dpa-Select held up well in 2022 and once again recorded revenue growth.
In the image sector, Aktuelle Bildfunk was also affected by the circulation declines, but here, too, the new pricing model showed the expected dampening effects. Coupled with the acquisition of some new customers, turnover actually increased by 0.2 million euros.
In the persistently difficult segment of the secondary marketing of images, the company succeeded in stabilising its previous revenues, despite the dramatic drop in prices in some cases and lower call-up figures due to the pandemic, and was able to report an increase of 1.2 million euros to 7.5 million euros as a result of the aforementioned merger with Zentralbild.
Revenues in the new product areas were less encouraging, showing a decline of 0.6 million euros for the first time after many years of growth. This decline of 0.5 million euros was mainly due to a slump in the video business in the wake of the Ukraine crisis and the resulting monothematic nature of the topics covered. The situation here only improved slightly at the end of last year.
Revenues from technology and transmission increased only marginally, by 0.1 million euros, and totalled 1.7 million euros. In the trading business, especially the distribution of partner products of AP and dpa-AFX, an increase of 0.2 million euros in revenues to 4.2 million euros was achieved.
Other operating income increased significantly by 2.6 million euros to 4.3 million euros, of which 1.6 million euros was attributable to the profit from the Zentralbild merger alone and a further 0.7 million euros to the reversal of various provisions.
At 107.6 million euros (previous year: EUR 102.6 million), the total operating performance thus increased by 5.0 million euros.
Following a significant increase in the previous year, the cost of materials remained almost constant, declining by 0.7% or 0.2 million euros to 33.2 million euros, mainly due to the absence of image fees as a result of the merger of Zentralbild, which even slightly overcompensated for the increase in expenses for IT services and the revenue-driven fee expenses of the growth areas and the trading business totalling 0.9 million euros.
In 2022, personnel expenses increased by around 2.2 million euros year-on-year from 60.6 million euros to 62.8 million euros.