The Independent reported strong growth in operating profit for 2023 on revenue which was flat year on year.
In 2023, according to figures that have been shared by the business but not yet published on Companies House, Independent Digital News and Media increased its annual operating profit by 82% to £3.5m for a new 15-month reporting period (compared with £1.9m in the 2022 accounts which covered 12 months).
The company last year changed its financial period to match the calendar year and align with the period used by most advertising agencies and clients, resulting in a 15-month reporting period with £56m revenue overall. Previously the Independent Digital News and Media period ran from October to September.
Revenue was down by 0.3% year-on-year on an annual basis to £46.1m in 2023.
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Projections for 2024 shared with Press Gazette show The Independent is on course this year to have doubled revenues since 2019, to £53.2m from £27m five years ago.
It is also set to have almost doubled trading profitability from £2.3m in 2019 to £4.5m for this year.
Independent Digital News and Media chief executive Christian Broughton told Press Gazette: “The doubling of the revenue and the doubling of the profit in that time period is important for the journalism and for the business. We’ve always said we need a business that empowers our journalism and journalism that empowers our business, and it’s working globally, and it’s working in the US very well.”
Broughton said that last year there was "really strong" revenue growth across all five of the brand's key strategic pillars: US expansion, e-commerce, video arm Independent TV, reader revenues and AI.
Broughton said: "There's great growth in the pillars, there's great profitability in the pillars, and it sets us up for this year. We are closing this year on 31st December, and we're heading very confidently towards double-digit growth in revenue driven by these pillars. So the strategy is really working. It's a strategy that's really about diversifying beyond advertising."
Press Gazette understands the proportion of low-yield open-auction advertising as part of the revenue mix continues to reduce. Advertising dipped below 50% of The Independent's total revenues for the first time in 2022.
US bringing in 20% of revenues to The Independent
Of the five key areas, Broughton highlighted Independent TV and the US in particular.
Independent TV, a dedicated online video channel launched in December 2020, saw revenue growth of 30% year-on-year in 2023 and hit a milestone of 100 million views per month on The Independent's website (excluding other platforms).
In August last year The Independent's then-CEO Zach Leonard moved into the new role of global chief operating officer and president, North America to lead its growth over the Atlantic. At the end of the year The Independent poached Mail Online's US editor Louise Thomas for the same role.
The brand said it increased its editorial headcount by 40% to 46 journalists over the course of 2023.
The Independent's overall global editorial workforce is now double where it was in 2018. The Independent closed its print newspaper in March 2016 to go digital-only.
According to chairman John Paton, the US is bringing in 23% of The Independent's total revenues and has just under 20% of total staff.
The Independent's monthly audience in the US is now within 8% of the size of Mail Online's audience across the Atlantic according to Comscore which put them on 29.4 million and 32.2 million respectively in August.
Broughton described this as "a really exciting moment, because it shows us that as America goes to the polls and as America seeks trusted journalism it's coming to The Independent".
By visits according to Similarweb, The Independent (37.6 million) is the 31st biggest news website in the US versus the Mail in ninth place (122.2 million visits) although it is the smaller brand that saw monthly and annual growth in August.
In the UK, for comparison, The Independent was the sixth biggest news website by audience size in August on 20.5 million people, almost level with Sky News and ahead of the Mirror, according to industry-recognised Ipsos Iris data.
Both Mail Online and The Sun, which launched into the US in late 2019, made editorial redundancies last month.
Broughton said: "I think it is about an investment into quality. It's an investment into trust. Newsguard always has us right up there with the very elite of global publishing on trust metrics... with The Independent, you get quality journalism in an incredibly agile, digital future-focused way. But quality journalism is what America needs, and it's getting it from The Independent right now."
Paton also pointed out that The Independent is running a different business model to those two news organisations in the US with its diversification away from advertising.
Broughton added: "It's a lot more than just a newsroom over in the US for us. It really is a rounded business, which gives it that durability and also gives it that growth rate... the US is a great source of growth for us, and it's going to be a great source of growth in the years to come too."
The Independent: From A2K to AI
Meanwhile, The Independent's first-party user data strategy, known as A2K or Anonymous to Known, reached 5.7 million registered users by December 2023.
E-commerce revenues were up 26% with highlights including Black Friday and travel content.
And on AI, The Independent has partnered with Google on product development using the AI model Gemini.
One pilot project on AI translation allowed The Independent staff to translate four times as many stories into Spanish for its Independent en Espanol website.
The Independent publishes in six languages and Broughton said use of AI is being rolled out further.
"What I particularly love about that is it's empowering the humans," he said. "It's not about disempowering journalists, it's about empowering them."
He added: "Early next year, or towards the end of this year, we'll have a lot more to say about AI projects, but we're great believers in newsrooms and media businesses have to get involved actively in order to have a voice in the future and to shape the future, because by working with the AI companies now, we're going to get a better outcome..."
In March Independent Digital News and Media announced a multi-year licensing deal with Buzzfeed UK, which includes Huffpost UK and sub-brands like food vertical Tasty and black British identity brand Seasoned.
Broughton told Press Gazette on Monday that the Buzzfeed brands are set to beat their projection for this year by 40%.
"So we are off to a flying start," he said. "We have safeguarded everyone's editorial independence so each team is free to create the content it wants to create. That is the genome of The Independent.
"But we have found great synergistic opportunities in the whole rest of the business," he added, citing the use of data, AI projects, licensing deals, ad stack and audience planning.
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