Results

Revenue for the year grew 12% to £346.3m

The Group delivered its highest profit since 2016 for its continuing business, reaching £46.4m (+11% year-on-year)

Digital services made up 55% of revenue, growing to more than 60% when including digital consumption from customers who take a print and digital bundled product. During the year, 66% of new subscribers to The Economist chose digital only offerings

Subscriber numbers at The Economist were 1,185,000, in line with last year. Notably, The Economist’s revenues grew 5% at constant currency and first-year subscriber retention grew markedly

Economist Impact accounted for the largest revenue increase among the Group’s four core businesses, and delivered revenue of over £106m for the year. The Events business hosted 222 events over the year, gathering more than 78,000 attendees in person and online

Economist Intelligence increased revenues to £45.5m driven by a 33% increase in revenues in Clearstate, and a 95% retention rate among Economist Intelligence Unit subscriptions

In its first full year of trading Economist Education launched three new online courses with a fourth planned in the coming months

The Group is on track to achieve its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 25% by 2025. The Group has reaffirmed its commitment to achieve net zero by 2045 and will be making its first disclosure in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) 

Half-year revenues for the Group were £159.3m, an increase of £17.5m or 12% on the prior year. While some parts of our business were undoubtedly bouncing back from the impact of covid last year, our overall revenue growth was still up 4% on the first half of 2019/20  

The Group’s half-year operating profit of £25.7m exceeded all expectations and was a significant improvement on both last year (£17.8m) and the first half of 2019/20 (£11.1m), which we use as a pre-covid comparator  

At the end of this first half, subscription volumes were 4% ahead of the same period last year at 1,151k.

Our Future Customer Experience (FCX) platform is now live in the UK and North America, a milestone on our planned roll-out globally by 2022  

Economist Impact has bounced back, with revenues of £40.0m in these six months, an increase of 52% on the prior year  

Economist Intelligence saw revenues rise 2% (9% at constant currency) to £21.8m