News Corp’s incredible pre-tax loss narrows to €6.78 million

Restructuring costs helped Storyful, the Irish arm of Rupert Murdoch’s social media intelligence and news outlet News Corp, post a pre-tax loss of €6.78 million last year.

New accounts show Storyful Ltd posted pre-tax losses as revenue fell 10 per cent from €5.08m to €4.57m in the 12 months to the end of June last year.

Directors explained that revenue was down due to the geographic shift of some contracts to other group companies.

Directors emphasized that not all of Storyful’s worldwide revenues were included in the results and that these relate only to Storyful Ltd., based in Ireland.

They said that over the past year, Storyful has continued to expand its media, brand and social platform services, and continued to invest in its product and technology divisions.

The pre-tax loss of €6.78 million in the previous year follows pre-tax losses of €8.97 million in the previous period.

The company recorded last year’s pre-tax loss after incurred restructuring costs of €852,526, followed by restructuring costs of €333,398 in fiscal 2020.

A note accompanying the financial statements states that the restructuring costs relate to a business restructuring in February and March last year.

The number of people employed by the company fell from 112 to 89 last year as personnel costs fell from €8.36 million to €6.5 million.

Former RTE prime time Presenter Mark Little founded the company in 2010 and Mr Little and the company’s investors sold it to News Corp in December 2013 for €18 million.

A note accompanying the financial statements states that the directors have considered the losses to date and report that they are satisfied that appropriate action has been taken to bring the company to profitability.

They state that the funds provided by the shareholder are sufficient to enable the company to meet its obligations as they come due.

News Corp last year injected an additional $6.4 million into the company, which bills itself as the world’s first social media news outlet.

The company’s cumulative losses of €48.8m were offset by the premium of €56m and the called share capital of €389,075, resulting in shareholders’ equity of €7.6m at the end of June 2021 led.

The prior year’s loss includes non-cash amortization charges of €331,178 and non-cash amortization of intangible assets of €1.15 million.

Management board salaries rose from €684,321 to €640,471 last year.