3. Position
Earnings performance
With a net profit for the year of 1.4 million euros, the earnings forecast was exceeded despite lower-than-expected growth in turnover. This is partly due to the continued strong performance of dpa’s subsidiaries and holdings. Despite the continuing high level of inflation, expenses rose only moderately due to the savings achieved.
The turnover of dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH increased by 1.1 million euros or 1.0% to 104.3 million euros in 2023. The growth target that had been set was therefore only partially achieved. The main influencing factors here were a noticeable decline in revenue from the secondary marketing of images and the loss of a major contract with the German federal government during the year.
Despite a continued decline in circulation figures in the print sector, the conversion of customers to the new pricing model approved by the supervisory board at the end of 2019, which was completed during the summer, meant that the turnover from traditional news services remained largely stable, albeit with slight shifts within the services. The dpa-Select service for corporate and institutional customers and the foreign-language news services were also able to maintain the previous year’s level of turnover overall, although the Arabic service clearly felt the effects of the crisis situation in the Middle East.
In the image sector, Bildfunk was also affected by the decline in circulation, but here too the new pricing model had the expected positive effect. Coupled with the acquisition of some new customers, turnover even increased slightly.
In the persistently difficult segment of secondary marketing of images, it was not possible to maintain the previous year’s sales volume due to the partly dramatic fall in prices. A decline of just under 0.4 million euros was recorded here, which could not be avoided despite a marketing offensive by the image sales department.
In the Custom Content segment, the loss and postponement of orders with major customers had a negative impact on turnover, meaning that revenue in this segment was significantly lower than in the previous year.
Overall, however, the revenues in the new product areas developed positively. Following a decline in turnover in the previous year, growth totalling 0.5 million euros was achieved again. The video business deserves particular mention here, which has evidently overcome the slump in the previous year in the wake of the Ukraine crisis and the resulting monothematic focus and stands out thanks to the consistent further development of the content offering.
The turnover from technology and transmission increased only marginally by 0.1 million euros and totalled 1.8 million euros. The trading business, in particular the sale of AP partner products, did not quite match the previous year’s turnover. A decline of 0.1 million euros to 4.1 million euros was recorded.
Other operating income fell significantly and as expected by 2.6 million euros to 1.8 million euros, of which 1.6 million euros alone was attributable to the one-off merger gain from the Zentralbild photo agency in 2022 and a further 1.0 million euros to increased reversals of provisions in the previous year.
At 106.0 million euros (previous year: 107.6 million euros), this resulted in a decrease of 1.6 million euros in the total operating performance.
The cost of materials increased by 4.7% or 1.6 million euros to 34.8 million euros, mainly due to the increase in expenses for IT services in the course of further consolidation and the revenue-driven fee expenses for growth areas such as dpa-Video.
In 2023, personnel expenses fell by around 1.8 million euros year-on-year from 62.7 million euros to 60.9 million euros.