Profits surge at media firm
Turnover at Distilled Media Group Ltd rose by more than €730,000 from €7.61m to €8.35m.
In addition to rising revenues, the company — which owns a number of the country’s most popular online brands, including daft.ie, boards.ie and adverts.ie — also saw its cost of sales rise by more than €60,000, while administrative expenses fell from €6.2m to €6.06m.
Distilled Media acquired Daft Media Ltd in 2011 as part of the group’s restructuring — a move that also sees Daft’s shares in adverts.ie and boards.ie transfer to the Distilled Media from the company founded by Eamon and Brian Fallon in 1997.
Figures provided by Distilled Media show that it has more than 3.6m unique users per month across its array of online brands and 165m page impressions per month — a key indicator of consumer demand.
On mobile, the group has more than 11m page impressions per month across the 81,000 users that have downloaded its app.
The directors’s report identifies sectoral and technology risks as the greatest threat to its business — specifically its reliance on the advertisement of goods and services for sale online.
It adds: “The business relies on its websites to be available at all times to its users; any sustained outage or sub optimal performance would pose a risk to the business.”
As in 2012, there was no dividend paid last year.
The number of employees dipped slightly, from 75 to 71, with staff costs falling in line with the reduction from €4.53m in 2012 to €4.11m.
Directors’ remuneration for management services rose from €159,500 to €195,000 in 2013, while remuneration for consultancy services provided by the board members fell by €29,600.
A tax adjustment in respect of prior periods reduced the company’s bill by more than €40,000 to a total of €222,815 — down from €247,960 in 2012.
The value of net assets rose to €3.13m from €1.78m last year, while cash in hand climbed to €1.75m from €1.26m.
The ordinary shares of Distilled Media are owned by its three directors — Brian and Eamon Fallon, who hold more than 1.3m shares each, and Paul Kenny who holds 280,000 shares.
