Profits at operator of daft.ie and donedeal.ie slow by 38%
New group accounts filed by Distilled Ltd show that pre-tax profits declined despite revenues rising by 14% from €41.38m to €47m in 2024.
Brothers Eamonn and Brian Fallon, who set up property website daft.ie, each have a 17% share in Distilled and they continued to add to their fortune in 2025 and last year.
The new accounts show that Distilled Ltd has paid out combined dividends of €28.8m this year and last year with dividends of €17.3m paid out this year and this followed a dividend payout of €11.5m in 2024.
The dividend payouts for 2025 and 2024 follow generous dividend payouts made in prior years.
In a deal last November, the entire Distilled business was valued at €624m after European online classifieds group Adevinta sold its 50% stake in Distilled Ltd for €312m to Dublin based fund manager Blacksheep Fund Management.
The deal put an estimated value of €212m on the Fallon brothers' joint 34% share in the business.
Separate accounts filed to Companies House in the UK show that Adevinta entity, Aurelia UK Feederco Ltd, booked a gain of €159m in 2024 from the €312m deal.
Distilled Media is today one of the country's most successful online ventures and along with daft.ie and dondeal.ie, the group also operates adverts.ie and gumtree.ie.
The daft.ie property website was established in 1997 by Eamonn and Brian Fallon who were only aged 20 and 15 at the time.
Distilled Ltd was established in 2015 after daft.ie operations along with that of sister company, adverts.ie were merged with Norway based Schibsted Media's Donedeal.ie.
Numbers employed by the group in 2024 increased from 148 to 162 as staff costs rose from €14.16m to €15.48m. The staff costs included termination payments of €315,652.
Commenting on the 2024 results, a spokeswoman for Distilled today said "Distilled's diversified portfolio continues to deliver strong momentum across verticals, underpinned by high consumer engagement and ongoing product innovation".
Figures provided by Distilled show that DoneDeal now attracts 6.4 million monthly visitors and according to IPSOS, it is now the number one platform in Ireland for car buyers to discover vehicles from car dealerships.
Distilled state that Adverts.ie continues to perform as a highly active peer-to-peer marketplace, drawing around 2 million monthly users and facilitating 200,000+ new listings each month.
"The platform remains resilient, with sustained user activity across a broad range of categories," the spokeswoman said.
The Distilled group business last year recorded post tax profit of €4.32m after incurring a corporation tax charge of €3.23m.
Directors' pay in 2024 totalled €405,067.
The company's operating lease charges totalled €727,087. The profit last year takes account of non-cash amortisation costs of €6.09m and restructuring costs of €315,652.
The group's shareholder funds totalled €73.56m and cash funds decreased from €11.38m to €10.77m.
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