Daily Sport Publisher Suffers £7.7 Million Loss, Plans To Launch An ISP

A typically outlandish Sunday Sport front page from 1988

After breaching a banking covenant and then being rescued earlier this year by its founder and “honorary chairman” David Sullivan, Daily Sport now posts a £7.7 million loss for the 12 months to July 31. The company is shouldering a £2.4 million cost from re-structuring and re-financing. The newspaper publisher and adult content seller’s revenue was down 22 percent, to £22.9 million — and yet these results are an improvement on its year-ago figures when SMG was hit by a £18 million loss due to a £20 million goodwill write-down on the value of its newspapers. In any case, the City was unimpressed, and SMG shares tumbled 10.5p to just over 4p on Tuesday.

In its digital division, SMG says it had a big £2 million loss in the period due to losing a commercial web-hosting and development contract — it offers web hosting for a variety of porn sites and mobile sites as well as its own Netcollex. On the upside, it has seized upon the liquidation of an unnamed ISP to buy the remaining assets and launch its own ISP, Telecom2. SMG says this will have “significant impact” on the company’s bottom line as well providing it with hosting services. The company <a href="http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-print-round-up-smg-sells-front-guardianexpedia-nmes-iphone-app/&quot; title="sold lads' mag Front“>sold lads’ mag Front for a tiny £87,500 fee, it says, to focus on the company’s “core publishing and digital business”, which are the two Sport papers and Netcollex.

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