'Significant growth' in digital revenues at News Corp Irish radio group
New accounts filed by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wireless Radio (ROI) Ltd show that the increase in revenues to €23.37m coincided with pre-tax losses narrowing slightly from €2.78m to €2.74m in the 12 months to the end of June 30 last.
The directors state that "digital revenues in particular delivered significant growth in the period and we continue to invest in this area to promote future growth".
The group also owns Limerick's Live 95Fm and Q102 in Dublin and the accounts show that group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased slightly from €2.7m to €2.73m.
The directors state that the impact of the increased revenue in the year on EBITDA has been offset by an increase in the operating costs during the year.
The US-headquartered News Corporation owned group - which also operates LMFM - last year recorded post tax losses of €1.16m after recording a corporation tax credit of €1.58m.
The directors' report states that "throughout the financial year the directors have continued to monitor the impact of the increased cost of living crisis along with other ongoing economic conditions".
They state that the company "has continued to operate successfully through these issues and will continue to meet further challenges head on".
The directors state that the group's local stations "deliver significant listenership in their respective franchise areas and combine to offer a quasi national urban targeted commercial proposition".
They also state that "economic conditions were difficult during the period, compounded by the war in Ukraine and the ongoing challenges of spiralling cost of living increases".
"In spite of these challenges however, the company continues to benefit from improving revenue performance and we commend the hard work and dedication of our loyal staff base throughout the period under review," they add.
Numbers employed by the group last year increased from 225 to 235 as staff costs decreased from €11.81m to €11.62m.
Directors' pay totalled €271,000.
The group's combined non-cash depreciation and amortisation costs last year totalled €5.47m. The group's operating lease costs totalled €998,000.
At the end of June last, the group had a shareholders' deficit of €11.79m.
This was made up of accumulated losses of €55.36m offset by share capital of €43.56m The group's cash increased from €1.45m to €1.83m.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Irish Sun
31 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
We dodged a bullet this week & Ursula must have been bricking it, now here's what we need to do for Trump's last 3 years
6 WE dodged a bullet this week. Advertisement Taoiseach 6 Trump and Von Der Leyen met in Scotland to agree a 15 per cent tariff deal Credit: Reuters Sitting opposite him was The Before they headed off to knock their heads together in private, Von Der Leyen said of Trump, 'He's tough, but fair,' while Trump said of himself: 'I'm a tough negotiator and dealmaker.' Advertisement Poor old Ursula. She must've been bricking it. Trump put the chances of a deal at '50-50', adding 'I'm not in a good mood.' Which must've made Ursula doubly petrified. Back in But after little more than an hour, the pair emerged and announced they'd struck a deal. It wouldn't be as good as the 10 per cent deal the Advertisement We'd be hit with across-the-board tariffs of 15 per cent, HALF of what Trump had vowed to impose today had a deal not been achieved. Trump triumphed: 'We have reached a deal. It's a good deal for everybody. "It's going to bring us closer together.' Von der Leyen hailed it too, as a 'huge deal', won after 'tough negotiations'. Micheal and Simon could pinch their jocks free from their a**e cheeks again. Phew. Advertisement The taoiseach said: 'In essence, we have avoided a trade conflict here which would have been ruinous, which would have been very damaging to our economy, and to jobs in particular.' NOT A POT TO PISS IN He was spot on. Had a deal not been thrashed out, Ireland, more than any other EU nation, would have been thoroughly banjaxed. Why? Well, our economy has been ridiculously over-reliant on revenue from US multinationals for decades. Before the IDA began the process of attracting the big US corporate giants to Ireland with the promise of low We hadn't a pot to piss in as a nation. In 1984, just four per cent of Ireland's tax revenue came from foreign multinationals. Advertisement The economy was a basket case. But throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early noughties, Ireland's economy boomed thanks to huge multinational tax revenues. WORRIED SICK By 2024, almost a third of all tax revenue (29 per cent) came from foreign multinationals. Some 75 per cent of them Without the Yanks and their tax dollars, we'd soon be back in the dark days of the 1980s. Advertisement No wonder Micheal and Simon and Think of the many tens of thousands of jobs that would have disappeared overnight. It would have meant economic armageddon. GOOD NEWS FOR IRISH Now, 15 per cent tariffs will hurt Ireland's coffers. But it's not as ruinous as might have been expected. The nitty gritty of this week's US-EU tariff deal still has to be worked out. Advertisement The While, pharma is not explicitly mentioned in the deal, Ursula Von Der Leyen said clearly that the 15 per cent rate WILL apply to the export of drugs to the US. Which is great news for us. It will save many jobs here. And Irish government officials deserve a pat on the back for ensuring a deal on pharma. Without it, we'd have been goosed. PIPE DREAM Remember, as many as 90 pharmaceutical companies operate in Ireland, with around 50,000 people employed by US pharma firms across the country. Advertisement To give you an idea of just how much Ireland relies on pharma taxes, last year they contributed €10 billion to the exchequer — about 10 per cent of all the tax Ireland raked in. We exported €78 billion worth of goods to the US last year. Pharma made up €58 billion of that total. All of which had riled Trump, who has been adamant since assuming power that he wants US pharma companies to manufacture back in the US. It's a pipe dream however, like his entire Make America Great Again fantasy. US multinationals are here not just because of our low corporate tax rates. Advertisement HEEL OF THE HUNT They're here because of our educated workforce, because we work hard and are reliable, because of Ireland's location on the edge of Moving back to the US would be complex, costly and time-consuming. In the heel of the hunt, just not worth it. And anyway, Trump will be gone from office in three years, by which time sanity will hopefully have prevailed in US politics and someone who doesn't want to destroy world trade will be in the Oval office. We can only hope and pray for that day. Advertisement Until then, we just keep the head down, roll with the 15 per cent tariffs, and hope a Trump bullet — and he will fire more, for sure — never hits home. RADICAL PRIEST INFAMOUS Ryan grew up on a farm in 6 Father Patrick Ryan gave money to the IRA and earned the nickname 'The Padre' Credit: Photocall Ireland He entered the Pallatine order aged 14, famously saying later in life that nothing confirmed the social status of a Advertisement He was posted as a young priest, aged 24, to East In 1969 he was posted to a parish in East He managed to get out of it by convincing his superiors that he needed to go home to care for his sick mother. Back home, as a disaffected priest he'd collect for the poor, but some of the donations he siphoned away for the IRA. His superiors noticed and he confessed to 'giving it to another organisation' without naming the Provos. Advertisement He became invaluable to the IRA, earning the moniker 'the Padre'. The British press were less romantic, calling him The Devil's Disciple and The Terror Priest. He would go on to become one of the IRA's biggest fundraisers. He personally helped bring money and guns from Gaddafi's Libya to the IRA in the 1980s. He also honed skills he learned in Africa to build detonators for IRA bombs, one of which was used in the Brighton bombing that almost killed Advertisement His devices were also used in the Hyde Park bombing in July 1982 and in the August 1979 Warrenpoint bombing that killed 18 British soldiers. He told his biographer, Jennifer O'Leary: 'The only regret I have was that I wasn't more effective, that the bombs made with the components I supplied didn't kill more.' Her book The Padre: The True Story of the Irish Priest Who Armed the IRA With Gaddafi's Money was published in 2023. It's a fine read. He was arrested in Belgium in 1988 in connection with the murders of three off-duty British soldiers in the Netherlands. Margaret Thatcher requested his extradition. Ryan responded by going on hunger strike and was repatriated to Ireland. Advertisement Thatcher demanded Charles Haughey, then taoiseach, hand him over, telling him, 'He's a really bad egg.' Haughey refused. He broke off ties with the IRA shortly afterwards, saying he had been compromised by British agents. He died in Dublin on June 15. LEGEND LOST THEY gathered in their many thousands this week to say goodbye to the king of heavy metal, 6 Icon Ozzy Osbourne passed away suddenly on July 22 Credit: Getty Images - Getty Advertisement 6 Thousands turned out for the Black Sabbath singer's funeral Credit: PA Outside Ozzy's boyhood home, which sits in the shadow of Villa Park stadium, fans and wellwishers laid wreaths and ballons plus drawings, posters and paintings to honour the Prince of Darkness. Despite his notoriety and his wealth, Ozzy, left, remained a humble man right up until his death. He preferred to take people down a peg or two and laugh at the world. He was a salt-of-the-earth Brummie, that's why. Farewell buddy. Advertisement SUBHUMANS CAGED I USED to cover the courts. Many moons ago now, but they were an important hunting ground for any reporter wanting to get to grips with reality. Drunks, domestic abusers, Gougers these days are far more violent; to wit, the five subhumans caged for 60 years this week for the barbaric three-hour Back in my day there were no people like that. REGULATION NEEDED THE online ghouls were at it within minutes of a cop being stabbed on Dublin's Capel street on Tuesday evening. Far-right accounts that flourish on Elon Musk's sewerpit, 6 Elon Musk's X platform allows people to spread lies without intervention Credit: Reuters The authorities call it 'misinformation' and 'disinformation'. Instead, they should just brand it all for what it is, plain and simpl. Advertisement LIES. If the same crap that appears on X were printed in a newspaper, it would be rightly sued and forced to pay out a substantial sum in reparations. But X claims it's not a publisher – it bloody well is – merely a platform and has no obligation to fact check anything that is put up. Not only is that argument balderdash (X is a publisher, just like a newspaper or a broadcaster and should be treated as such) it is morally repulsive. But just one look at Advertisement The state is scared to get tough with the tech giants, but if free speech and truth is to mean anything, X and Meta and the rest of them need to be regulated just as newspapers and broadcasters are. CASH GRAB ONLY in Ireland. A few years back the HSE paid a medical supplies company €720,000 TWICE for the same invoice. The right arm not knowing what the left arm is at is a core feature of how the state operates. Has been and will forever be thus. Well, new HSE boss, Bernard Gloster, to his credit, is shaking things up. Keep at it. The HSE is trying to recoup the €750k it overpaid. Good luck with that seeing as the company, PMD Device Solutions is in liquidation. Only in Ireland.
Irish Independent
2 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Investors pare bets on European Central Bank interest rate cut
©Reuters Money markets pared back their bets on European Central Bank (ECB) rate cuts yesterday, now pricing in just a 50pc chance of an additional 25-basis-point easing move by the end of the year. Markets had on Wednesday seen a 58pc chance of a rate cut by December, which was down near certainty last week, before the announcement of the US-Japan trade deal and the ECB meeting. Register for free to read this story Register and create a profile to get access to our free stories. You'll also unlock more free stories each week.
Irish Examiner
7 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Reducing Vat rate a blunt and costly policy instrument for hospitality
Less than a week on from its publication, one of the fundamental assumptions underpinning the summer economic statement has changed with the agreement of the EU-US trade deal. This will have implications for October's budget and a potential reduction in the overall budgetary package outlined by the Government just a week ago. Of the total budget package detailed in the summer economic statement, €1.5bn has been allocated to a "tax package". The Government identifies the narrowness of Ireland's tax base as a cause of concern in the summer economic statement, noting that income tax, corporation tax, and revenue make up the bulk of Ireland's tax base. At a time of heightened global economic uncertainty, increased tariffs for Irish exporters, a growing and ageing population, increasing demand for and pressure on services, a further narrowing of Ireland's tax base in the budget would seem at odds with the programme for government commitment to maintain a broad tax base "to guard against the need for counter-cyclical fiscal policy in the event of a downturn" and prepare for demographic change. Much of the subsequent discussion on the so-called "tax package" has been the commitment in the programme for government to support the hospitality sector through changes to Vat and its implications in terms of the space available for any income tax changes in the budget. According to the Department of Finance, a reduction in the Vat rate for the hospitality sector to 9% would cost almost €900m a year This discussion fails to look at the broader context, the impact to date of "tax packages" introduced by the previous government from 2020-2025, and the precariousness of Ireland's tax base. Looking at budgetary policy of the last government, income gaps have opened up between working households, and the gap between people and households at the bottom and middle of the income distribution and those at the top has grown. This has been driven by the skewed nature of income tax reduction choices which prioritised higher earners and provided relatively little to low income workers paying income tax at the standard rate. This was further compounded by the concentration of temporary cost-of-living measures among lower income households, supports that will fade away. The tax packages contained in those budgets are permanent, costly, and have not reached those working households who have been most impacted by rising costs. Ireland's tax base is narrow, dominated by three revenue streams, and our over exposure in terms of corporation tax is a major concern Rather than looking at how to build a broad and sustainable tax base, recent discussion has focused on the "tax package", the cost of the aforementioned Vat reduction for the hospitality sector, which would narrow Ireland's tax base further, and how much this would leave for an "income tax package" which — if modelled on previous budgetary policy — will see the income gaps between working households grow further. Softening demand Looking at Vat, it accounted for 23% of Ireland's total tax revenue last year. At present, the hospitality sector is subject to the reduced 13.5% Vat rate. The sector was subject to the lower rate of 9% from 2011 to 2018, and again from late 2020 to mid-2023 at an estimated cost of €3.6bn. The sector has identified high energy costs, softening demand, labour market challenges, increased cost of inputs, and a lack of hotel capacity as the main challenges facing the industry and the rationale for a return to the 9% VAT rate. However, a recent Department of Finance examination of the Vat reduction for the hospitality sector since 2011 concluded that the reduction was not always passed on to customers in the form of lower prices, it was highly regressive in that it benefitted higher income households more than lower income households, and it was very costly. It is clear that parts of the hospitality sector are under significant pressure, but other parts of it are doing very well Reducing the Vat rate is a very blunt and costly policy instrument. It will not lower energy costs, it will not increase demand, nor will it address the challenge of full employment or produce more hotel capacity — the very issues that the sector itself has identified as major challenges. The Government and the sector must look at other available sustainable measures to support the industry, including measures used in other EU member states to support hospitality and tourism. Calls for new tax breaks, or the return of old ones, are a feature of most periods of economic and social recovery. However, their provision involves great cost to the State and the unequal allocation of these resources to small groups of beneficiaries. Few of these initiatives have proven to be worthwhile in the past — in particular the opportunity cost of using the revenue in a better way is frequently overlooked. As the first of the kites are flown in advance of Budget 2026, the Government should turn its attention to those who have been most impacted by persistent rising prices, and use the resources available to ensure that vulnerable households are protected and supported through adequate social welfare rates, and that growing income gaps between working households are closed. It must deliver on the commitment to progressive budgets and build a broad and sustainable revenue base that can meet the needs of a growing and ageing population This requires developing progressive policies and measures in a fair taxation system, and working with the hospitality sector to identify sustainable ways to fund the maintenance of the hospitality and tourism industry. A reduction in Vat for the hospitality sector is costly and it won't address the challenges the sector faces. It didn't address these core issues in the 124 months that it was applied between 2011 and 2023, and there is no evidence to suggest that it will do so if applied again in Budget 2026. Michelle Murphy is a research and policy analyst at Social Justice Ireland
