Centaur Media, publisher of Marketing Week, paid out more than £2.1m in restructuring costs last year – with £1.9m being shelled out in redundancies alone – yet still managed to rack up pre-tax profits of £8m.
The underlying revenue from the marketing and creative community fell by 6%, compared to 4% overall, and the firm admitted that Marketing Week had been “impacted”.
Business publishing revenues were also down – by 11% on 2011, at £41.8m – following the closure of the print editions of New Media Age and Design Week.
Meanwhile the Conference Division of its marketing and creative division – a one-time a major source of revenue – has also been wound down.
This has been offset by “good performances” from the Creative Review portfolio, which has been more closely integrated with Marketing Week. Recent purchase Econsulting will also work closely with Marketing Week following the acquisition.
Centaur chief executive Geoff Wilmot commented: “This has been a transformational year. Following last summer’s major restructuring, the principal focus of the management team has been to continue to re-engineer the business, and to execute a series of targeted acquisitions designed to accelerate delivery of our strategic objectives.
“We have made excellent progress towards the achievement of our three-year targets and have also reported a strong set of results, delivered in difficult economic circumstances. We are seeing good momentum as we head into the new financial year.”
In 2011, Centaur recorded a pre-tax loss of £30.3m in its year-end results, including redundancy costs of £2.5m.
Last year also saw the publisher vacate its HQ in Poland Street, Soho (pictured), which is where the business first launched in 1981 when former chairman Graham Sherren bought Marketing Week Communications.
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