Condé Nast International, once a stalwart, struggles with losses
Keith J. Kelly
3-4 minutes
London-based Condé Nast International in recent years has been regarded as the rising star of the privately held publishing empire owned by the Newhouse family — but a look at the available numbers for the International wing shows it has wrestled with steep losses as recently as 2016.
In Britain, the company’s last publicly available report filed in December 2017 for the 2016 fiscal year showed the publisher of British Vogue, British GQ, Vogue Paris and an Italian edition of Vanity Fair among 40 other international titles lost nearly $50 million.
That’s not quite as bad as the domestic Condé Nast Publications, which lost $120 million in 2017 and was hoping it could cut losses in half to $60 million for 2018.
The Conde Nast International arm includes only the European publications headquartered in London but not licensing and publications deals elsewhere around the world, from India to China, a CNI spokeswoman told the Post. Those numbers are not publicly disclosed, but the spokeswoman insisted if they were disclosed it would have shown an overall profit for all overseas operations in 2016 and 2017, as well as a projected profit for 2018. The European titles appear to be wrestling with many of the problems afflicting US publications plus some one-time costs that hit earnings.
CNI, covering the European publications, reported a group loss in 2016 — equivalent to operating loss in the US — of $8.3 million on revenue of $511.7 million, according to regulatory filings in London, based on current British pound-to-US dollar conversion rate. Its “total comprehensive loss” in Europe was about $48 million.
The numbers show that European revenue was up about 4.4 percent over the preceding year, when Conde Nast International recorded about $490.2 million in revenue. But in 2015, the European branch was still reporting a “profit before taxation” — roughly equivalent to operating profit in the US — of about $6 million and a “total comprehensive profit” — roughly equivalent to net profit in US terms — of $7.8 million. Figures for CNI for fiscal 2017 are expected to be filed next month.
In the US, Condé Nast a decade ago was estimated to pull in $1 billion by itself in total revenue. Today, the combined domestic and international wings are estimated to have about $1 billion in total revenue between them.
The change has been fueled by the domestic the slide over 10 years as advertisers began leaving print for digital, and Condé Nast International’s rapid expansion over the same period under its CEO, Jonathan Newhouse, now destined to be chairman of a newly combined Condé Nast.
Conde Nast International today is said to generate between 40 to 50 percent of the revenue of the new combined company, according to an insider.
