Digital media company the Currency triples profit to €300,000

Digital media group the Currency increased its profit to more than €300,000 in its third full year in operation, accounts filed at the companies office show.

Currency Media, the company behind the financial journalism publication, trebled its profit in the year to the end of September 2022 compared with the previous 12-month period, when it recorded a profit of almost €95,000.

The Currency now has about 6,000 paying subscribers, or members, up from 5,500 a year ago, Tom Lyons, the chief executive and co-founder of the business, told The Irish Times.

The company generated revenue of €1.25 million in its last financial year, with less than 10 per cent of this derived from advertising, and it has traded well in the first eight months of the current financial year, he said.

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“One of the things that has really helped our business is that we are primarily an annual subscription business. About 72 per cent of our member base pay annually, which gives stability to the company,” Mr Lyons said.

Mr Lyons founded the Currency in 2019 together with former Business Post editor Ian Kehoe, who serves as editor of the publication. The two directors shared €180,000 in pay between them last year, up from €163,000, the accounts show.

Their company now has shareholders’ funds of €120,332, up from a deficit of €181,133 a year earlier, while it has cash of about €1.24 million on its balance sheet, up from €867,000 the year before.

Mr Lyons said the strategy of focusing on original long-form journalism rather than replicating breaking news-style content had proven the correct one. The Greater Dublin Area is its biggest market for members, followed by London.

The Currency has held 12 events since the end of the financial year, he added, facilitating greater interaction with its members, and has also recently experimented with broadening the mix of its weekend coverage.

The company made a donation of €25,320 to Unicef to support its work in Ukraine last year. “We felt that it was the right thing to do in the circumstances,” Mr Lyons said.

The title, which launched just six months before the Covid-19 pandemic, employs eight journalists full-time and has more than 20 contributors.

“Now that we’re making a profit the plan is to invest more in journalism. We think that provided we maintain our commitment to quality journalism and we continue to give our members the content they want, we will grow more this year.”