Listings and books publisher *Time* Out may need a £3 million cash injection from its founder-owner to remain a going concern, according to its annual filings, cited in a report from the Evening Standard.
Turnover rose by 13.6 percent to £29.2 million, but pre-tax losses more than doubled to almost £3.1 million in 2008, and “liabilities exceeded total assets by £10.7 million at the end of December 2008. Print circulation is also falling, and advertising dropped by up to 30 percent.
But the company’s online and mobile businesses appear to be thriving. The UK website has “strong growth” to 2 million monthly visitors, with traffic growing at 29 percent year on year, according to Catherine Demajo, the mag’s director of circulation, and the company has plans for new sites in the U.S. for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Washington.
At a panel organised by the Mobile Marketing Association yesterday, David Pepper, the MD of Time (NYSE: TWX) Out London, said that Time Out London’s new app, which has been sponsored by Smirnoff, has been downloaded 53,000 times across 44 countries in one month, despite the fact that it appears to concentrate only on London listings and content.
The Smirnoff content, which includes competitions, also received twice as many page views in the app as it did on the website, with 40 percent daily and 60 percent weekly return frequencies.
Time Out had an operating profit of £343,000 before exceptional items. The group also has minority stakes in the weekly editions of Time Out in New York and Chicago. Tony Elliott, the founder and owner of the group, has now committed himself to putting in “at least” £3 million into the business and lenders have agreed to new financing.
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