Fallon brothers share €5.8m dividend as group returns to profit

The Fallon brothers have shared a further €5.8m dividend windfall with other shareholders from their online Distilled SCH group of companies last year.

New accounts filed by the Fallons’ Distilled SCH Ltd show that the group returned to profit to record a pre-tax profit of €1.6m last year.

The group returned to profit following revenues last year increasing by 10.5% from €23.8m to €26.35m

The revenues include the income generated by daft.ie and the Done Deal website.

The €5.8m dividend pay-out to Eamonn and Brian Fallon and other shareholders last year followed a dividend payout of €4.97m in 2017.

Distilled SCH Ltd was established in 2015 after daft.ie operations along with that of sister company, adverts.ie were merged with Schibsted Media’s DoneDeal.ie

The daft.ie property website was established in 1997 by Eamonn and Brian Fallon who were only aged 20 and 15 at the time.

Today, nine out of every ten properties for sale in Ireland appear on daft.ie and the website lists approximately 70,000 properties for sale or to rent on the site at any one time.

Underlining the success of the website, 2.5 million unique users visit Daft.ie every month generating 228 million page impressions.

The accounts disclose that the two Fallons - who each have a share of 23.66% - and Paul Kenny directly and indirectly control 50% of the voting share capital in the Distilled SCH Ltd.

The directors state that in a post balance sheet event, Distilled SCH Ltd received dividends of €5m from a number of subsidiaries.

Distilled SCH Ltd last year recorded post tax profits of €618,177 after paying corporation tax of €985,163.

The pre-tax profit at the group last year takes account of non-cash amortisation costs of €6m and non-cash depreciation costs of €304,563.

The profit also takes account of restructuring costs of €420,911 and a note attached to the accounts state that they relate to general restructuring of the group.

Numbers employed at the group last year increased from 142 to 147 with staff costs increasing from €10.88m to €11.13m.

The accounts show that 78 are employed in technical; 63 in sales, marketing and customer support and 17 in administration.

Pay to directors - excluding dividends - last year decreased from €728,788 to €602,651.

The company’s operating lease charges last year increased from €471,888 to €573,172.

Shareholder funds at the group last year totalled €106.97m - the group’s cash pile increased from €3.7m to €4m.