The Evening Standard says commuters coming back despite losses deepening
The Evening Standard reported a loss of £14m for the last year as the commuter paper battled to draw office workers back to its pages.
According to filings on Companies House, the firm faced a 36 per cent year-on-year fall in turnover from £44m to £28m last year.
The London freesheet said that despite work from home orders being lifted, the pandemic impact continued to be felt in terms of advertising revenue.
The organisation notably reduced its head count from 320 to 236 in the 53 weeks to 3 October last year.
As a result of these cuts, as well as the number and size of newspapers printed, the wage and pensions bill fell from £21m to £16m as the overall cost of sales was cut by a third.
However, the firm’s outlook statement did point out that there had been a “consistent improvement in commuter numbers”, as well as print revenue, since summer 2021.
The Evening Standard is majority owned by Russian-British business titan Evgeny Lebedev, who also owns the Independent and was awarded a peerage by Boris Johnson last year.
Charlotte Ross is currently acting editor for the newspaper after Emily Sheffield left the top spot after just 15 months with immediate effect