Business

Accumulated profits at Dermot Kennedy touring firm hit €4.4m

Singer was engaged in hectic touring schedule last year

Accumulated profits at the touring firm owned by singer and songwriter Dermot Kennedy last year rose to €4.44m. Photograph: Andres Poveda

Gordon Deegan
Tue May 21 2024 - 17:00

Accumulated profits at the touring firm owned by singer and songwriter, Dermot Kennedy last year rose to €4.44 million.

Kennedy’s Riggins Touring Ltd recorded post-tax profits of €2 million for the 12 months to the end of June last. This is an increase of 15.5 per cent on the post-tax profits of €1.76 million recorded in the previous year.

Best known for hit tunes such as Giants, Paradise, Better Days and Outnumbered, Kennedy was one of the big hits at the Glastonbury festival last June in England. The 32-year-old Rathcoole native also played to a combined 155,000 people over five shows last summer, with three at Thomond Park in Limerick and two shows at Marlay Park in Dublin.

Speaking earlier this year on the sell-out appeal of Dermot Kennedy, MCD’s Denis Desmond said that Kennedy selling 155,000 tickets in Ireland in 2023 was “huge”.

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As part of an extensive tour of the US Kennedy also played Madison Square Garden in New York City and Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado in May and June 2023.

The hectic touring this year followed the release of his second studio album, Sonder, in November 2022.

Underlining the company’s buoyant 2023, the accounts show that the company’s cash funds increased sharply from €1.67 million to €2.77 million, while money owed to the firm by debtors more than doubled from €2.67 million to €5.7 million.

In March, Kennedy released a new EP entitled I’ve Told The Trees Everything and separate accounts for Kennedy’s Riggins Recordings Ltd show that the company’s balance sheet received a big boost with the addition of €7.9 million under the heading of intangible assets. This resulted in the company’s shareholder funds increasing more than seven fold from €1.17m to €10.2 million at the end of June last.

Kennedy’s popularity has reached new levels following his initial breakthrough when he took the number one slot in both the official Irish singles and album charts with Giants and Without Fear.

Since the release of his 2017 EP Doves and Ravens, Dermot Kennedy’s career has gone from strength to strength. Kennedy’s debut album, Without Fear, achieved multi-platinum status with top 10 single Outnumbered as well as hit tunes Power Over Me and Giants.

Kennedy won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Song of the Year for 2021 with Better Days.

Gordon Deegan

Gordon Deegan

Gordon Deegan is a contributor to The Irish Times

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