Irish Daily Star group announces record profits

Independent Star - the company which publishes the Irish Daily Star newspaper and its sister title The Irish Daily Star Sunday - has today reported a 25% increase in operating profits from €5.226m to €6.514m according to results just published for the year ended December 28 2007.

Profits for the company have increased by a cumulative 151% since 2004 making this profit performance the highest ever for the company.

For the year just reported the company also saw its net margins increase from 13.5% to 15.7%.

These record profits enabled the company to increase the dividends paid to shareholders from €5m to €6.6m.

Circulation for the paper’s titles also recorded substantial year on year growth. The daily title recorded an average ABC for 2007 of 109,054 representing a 4.2% increase on 2006 figures. The Sunday title reported an average 2007 ABC of 63,339 - an increase of 6.8% on the previous year.

Speaking today managing director Paul Cooke said: “These extremely strong results demonstrate that we continue to make substantial gains in an increasingly crowded marketplace. This performance can be attributed to our strategy of continuous reinvestment in the product and with these results we are confident that we can further expand our footprint on the market in 2008.”