Pre-tax profit at Daily Star owner down 7%

INDEPENDENT Star Limited – the holding company which owns the Irish Daily Star newspaper and its sister title, the Irish Daily Star Sunday – suffered a 7% drop in pre-tax profits to just over €6.8 million last year, according to accounts recently filed with the Companies’ Office.

The company’s directors said they were “satisfied” with the results of the year.

“Given the recent downturn in the Irish and global economies, the directors expect trading conditions in 2009 to be challenging,” the directors’ report to the accounts read.

The company, which is an equal joint venture between Independent News & Media (INM) and Britain’s Express Newspapers group, made a pre-tax profit of just over €7.33m in 2007.

Turnover for last year amounted to €46.96m, up marginally from €46.79m for the previous year. Operating profit was down from €7.34m to €6.84m.

The Irish edition of the Daily Star also saw its daily circulation figures fall by 6.6% in the second half of last year, to 97,862 copies – as contained in the last set of industry figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), earlier this year.

Latest ABC figures, detailing movement during the first half of this year, are due shortly.

The daily title recorded an average circulation of 107,227 for 2008 as a whole.