The increased expenses for salary payments and social security contributions due to a noticeable increase in the number of employees as well as increased provisions for severance payments, leaves of absence, pension payments and vacation days were offset by a net decrease of 4.0 million euros in special contributions to the dpa provident fund. The increase in employees was mainly due to the expansion of the Custom Content editorial team and five additional trainee positions. In addition, further improved recruitment measures over the course of 2023 enabled us to successfully fill more vacant positions.
In times of wars and crises, as well as an initially high inflation rate, the company must pay greater attention to the mental stress of dpa’s teams. In cooperation with TÜV Nord, employees have been – and will continue to be – offered support in coping with this stress. Within this context, it is important to emphasise the preparations for the planned risk assessment related to mental stress, which will be carried out group-wide in the first half of 2024.
The ongoing digitalisation of editorial production processes also means that processes that were previously downstream will be part of the general reporting process in future. For this reason, the digital editorial department of dpa-infocom GmbH will be dissolved as of June 30, 2024. The necessary preparations had already begun in 2023. Part of this was the setting up of a digital job exchange within the group.
The annual average number of employees rose to 716 (previous year: 697). In addition, an average of 78 (previous year: 99) temporary staff were employed. The proportion of female employees at the company increased slightly and now stands at around 52%. The number of part-time employees increased to 159 (previous year: 157).
At 2.8 million euros, depreciation and amortisation remained at the previous year’s level.
Other operating expenses increased by 0.8 million euros to 25.6 million euros despite the absence of the special expenses for the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup. Increased technical development and operating costs to accelerate the agency’s key innovation projects and for construction measures at the Hamburg and Berlin locations played a major role in this.
The financial result amounted to 19.5 million euros compared with 17.9 million euros in the previous year, an increase of around 8.7%. In addition to higher earnings contributions from subsidiaries and investments, which increased by a total of 0.7 million euros, write-downs on financial assets in connection with the sale of an investment and unrealised price losses from the valuation of securities held as fixed assets in the previous year were also significantly reduced.
In contrast to the current year, the previous year was burdened with income taxes of 0.7 million euros.
This resulted in earnings before taxes of 1.4 million euros. Net income after taxes also amounted to 1.4 million euros and was therefore 0.2 million euros higher than in the previous year.