The Irish Times Ltd, publisher of The Irish Timesand ireland.com,returned to profit last year just two years after financial crisis threatened the future of the company.
Results published yesterday show operating profits at €7 million, with the disposal of assets contributing a further €1.8 million towards an overall pre-tax profit of €8.5 million.
Staff at the newspaper will benefit from a profit-sharing scheme to the tune of €675,000 after the company turned around a €2.8 million loss in 2002.
The improvement was achieved largely through cost savings with turnover was flat at €95 million due to the soft advertising market in the first half of the year, although the market picked up substantially in the second six months of 2003.
The company made a €2.4 million profit on the sale of the Irish Fieldand €928,452 from the sale of the ITELIS database. However, there was a €1.5 million loss on the closure of the ICPC Ltd data-processing business, meaning that the net gain on all Irish Timesdisposals was €1.8 million.
Itronics, the subsidiary that operates the ireland.comwebsite, reduced its losses from €2.8 million to €800,000 - approaching break-even on a cash basis.
Irish Times Ltd managing director Ms Maeve Donovan todlthe newspaper: "2003 was a very positive year for The Irish Times. We have substantially completed our well-publicised restructuring programme, consolidated our subsidiary activities and developed a new contract printing business at our plant at Citywest."