Storyful receives another cash injection from Murdoch’s News Corp

Loss-making media company Storyful received a €4 million cash injection from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp earlier this month, bringing the total amount provided by its parent to nearly €40 million since it was acquired.

The Dublin-based company, which uses social media feeds, user-generated content and proprietary technology to frame news reporting, was sitting on accumulated losses of more than €24 million at the end of June 2018.

Storyful was co-founded by former RTÉ journalist Mark Little in 2010 and acquired in an €18 million deal by News Corp in 2013.

While it began as a so-called “social news agency”, Storyful has in recent years expanded to help brands better manage their corporate reputations.

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Recently filed documents show Storyful received €4 million in fresh equity from News Corp last week. This is in addition to the €5.5 million cash injection it got earlier this year.

Storyful also received €12 million in fresh equity from News Corp last June and prior to this it was given €4.5 million from its parent in September 2016 and a further €7.2 million in November 2017.

Subsidiary

Combined, this brings to €33.3 million the amount that News Corp has ploughed into the subsidiary since mid-2016, and to €39.3 million in total since it acquired the company.

The last set of publicly available accounts for the company show it reported a €9 million loss in the 12 months to the end of June 2018.

Storyful said at the time that it had made “substantial” investments in its product and technology departments that year.

The company employed 138 people at the end of June last year, up from 100 people 12 months earlier. Staff costs during that period fell to €6.7 million from €12 million with directors’s remuneration totalling €315,258.

After staying with Storyful after its acquisition, Mr Little left in 2015 to briefly lead Twitter Ireland. More recently, he co-founded Kinzen with Áine Kerr and Paul Watson.

The new digital news venture officially launched earlier this year. Mr Watson recently left Kinzen to take up the role of chief technology officer with a new company called Caliber Media Works.