The Times and the Sunday Times rack up annual losses of £24m
News UK division Times Newspapers Ltd, publisher of the Times and the Sunday Times, has reported an annual loss of £24m for the year to the end of June on the back of a 4 per cent decline in revenues to £348m.
The losses nevertheless marked a slight improvement on 2012 when £28.8m was lost but will make for grim reading for proprietor Rupert Murdoch, who has been nursing losses at both the Sun and Sun on Sunday in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
These travails saw News Group Newspapers plunge £75m into the red, entirely due to costs of £87.5m incurred by “non-operational, one-off charges relating to allegations of voicemail interception and inappropriate payments to public officials and other related matters.”
The figures still represent an improvement on 2012’s dire figures, when News Group recorded a pre-tax loss of £318m.