The Evening Standard has reported a loss of £14m for last year as the Covid pandemic continued to dent advertising income and commuters remained at home, taking the London freesheet’s losses to almost £70m in the past five years.
The newspaper, which is majority owned by the Russian-British businessman Evgeny Lebedev, embarked on a big cost-cutting drive during the pandemic, reducing staff numbers by more than a quarter from 320 to 236 in the 53 weeks to 3 October last year.
The publisher endured another tough year, which also featured the departure of its editor, Emily Sheffield, the sister of the former prime minister David Cameron’s wife, Samantha, after just 15 months. Sheffield had taken over from the former chancellor George Osborne last October.
The Evening Standard reported a 36% year-on-year fall in turnover from £44m in 2020 to £28m last year. The title has been hit particularly hard as it relies on advertising for 90% of its revenues.
It has run up £68.2m in pre-tax losses since it last made a profit of £517,000, in 2016. The publisher did manage to reduce its annual loss from the £17m made in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
“The coronavirus pandemic continued to cause an industry-wide reduction in advertising revenue which, when combined with fewer people travelling by public transport in Greater London and a lack of future visibility, resulted in a number of challenges across the sector,” the company said. “Challenges on print revenues required the company to be diligent on costs.”
The company’s wage and pensions bill fell from £21m to £16m as the overall cost of sales was cut by a third, about £11m “through a reduction in the number and size of newspapers printed alongside a reduction in all discretionary spending”.
The Evening Standard’s financial accounts, published at Companies House on Tuesday, also show that the newspaper made a £357,000 payment for compensation for loss of office last year.
In 2017-18, Lebedev, who was given a peerage in 2020, sold a 30% stake in the Evening Standard to a Cayman Islands company, which later turned out to be controlled by a bank with close ties to the Saudi Arabian state.
Lebedev also controls the online-only Independent.
