In late August it was "FT reports small profit under new Japanese owners".
Maybe they just like editorializing with adjectives.
From The Telegraph, Sept. 16:
Profits drop at the Economist after 'painful' year
A dramatic decline in advertising revenue contributed to a “painful” year for The Economist as it suffered an 11pc drop in profits despite raising subscription prices by 20pc.
In its annual report, the weekly magazine said nearly a fifth of sales came from advertising, compared with 23pc in 2015 and 40pc seven years earlier. Chris Stibbs, chief executive, said magazine sales were the largest contributor to profits for the first time, thanks to a 52pc jump in profits.
He said this was due to the “tremendous strides” the company had taken, but also a result of the downturn in advertising revenues.Thinking about it (for a millisecond) maybe the Barclay twins want to knock down the (perceived) valuation of other papers with a view to picking them up?
“A significant price rise was introduced early in the year and expertly handled so that there was little impact on total volume or new starts,” Mr Stibbs said. In circulation, revenue increased 21pc year on year – and its profits by 52pc. Despite the price increase, the company said the number of subscribers had grown in the year, prompting the board to increase the marketing budget over the “next few years”.
Of The Economist’s subscribers, 73pc buy the company’s digital offer, up from 63pc in the previous year....MORE
Although The Economist is majority owned by the Agnelli clan, the FT is the only major paper I can think of that doesn't have a billionaire sugar daddy involved in one way or another.
Buffet has his string of papers, including the hometown Omaha World-Herald, Bezos has the WaPo, the NYT has Carlos Slim, the WSJ/Barron's/MarketWatch/DJ empire is one of Mudoch's fiefs as is The Sun.
Even The Guardian, along with their slick little Scott Trust ownership set-up has the Project Syndicate billionaires, Soros and Gates, in the background.
And then there's that fellow in New York, Bloomie something.
Just kidding, yr. honor. You have to love any company that would relay this about themselves:
...Shkreli also declined to discuss Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. He responded to an email earlier this week with “hahahahahahahahahahahaha” before castigating Bloomberg LP, which publishes financial data and news. “Bloomberg is an overpriced, legacy software system that subsidizes a money-losing media company,” Shkreli wrote. “This state of affairs will soon change.”...Now where was I headed with this? It seems to have gone all stream-of-consciousness on me.
Ah yes. The Economist's earnings at £54m are a tad larger than the last reported figure for The Telegraph, an un-adjectivised:
Telegraph Media Group delivers operating profit of £32.2m
