Vocento reports a 6.7% drop in national digital advertising up to September
National digital advertising in Vocento’s Press business is not a driver. In the first nine months of the year, digital advertising revenues fell by 6.7%. The publisher announced a few months ago that it was going to implement a plan to alleviate this deterioration.
However, this hole is compensated by the better performance of local advertising in its regional newspapers, which increased by 1.5% in the first nine months of the year. Overall, the advertising revenues of Vocento’s titles increased by 2% so far this year, to 86 million euros, thanks to the upturn in the magazine and supplement segment.
Circulation revenues fell by 4.6% to 76 million euros. The sale of digital subscriptions has not been able to offset the sustained fall in the sale of physical copies (ABC has lost 11% of its circulation). At this point, Vocento claims to have 133,000 paying digital readers (+32%), of which 49,000 correspond to ABC and another 85,000 to the regional newspapers. However, Vocento acknowledges that ARPU (revenue per user) has fallen by 4.7% to 5.6 euros, due to the focus on annual subscriptions.
By press segment, ABC managed to increase its revenues by 1.6% (advertising fell by 2.8%), with a negative EBITDA of 1.6 million euros. Meanwhile, regional newspapers improved their revenues by 0.8%, but with a positive EBITDA of 12 million euros. For the moment, Relevo has earned 1.2 million euros this year and has a negative EBITDA of more than 5 million euros.
Advertising in ABC has fallen by 2.8% this year to 21.4 million euros.
Outside the traditional Press business, Vocento obtained 9.7 million euros in revenues from Gastronomy (+26%) and a further 16 million euros from its agencies (+34%). In total, Vocento’s revenues amounted to 255 million euros between January and September, up 5%.
The company’s EBITDA fell by 28% in the first nine months, to 7.3 million euros. This fall is due, among other reasons, to the cost of indemnities in the Press area, the drop in the readership margin and the negative impact of Relevo. Despite this, Vocento maintains its objective of improving on last year’s EBITDA by 2023, supported in part by the non-press businesses, which have generated EBITDA of 8 million euros so far this year (double the figure for 2021).
Loses 15 million euros
In addition, a significant increase in depreciation and amortisation has caused Vocento’s losses to multiply this year to 15 million euros, compared to a loss of 1.2 million euros in the previous year.
Debt grew 43% to EUR 65 million at the end of the third quarter. So far this year, the company has generated a negative ordinary cash flow of 16 million euros due to the investment in Relevo, delays in collections in digital services (Red.es programme) and advances in payments to foreign paper suppliers, among other factors.
