Roger Lynch, the chief executive of Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, said in an interview on Friday that the company grew its business last year, though narrowly missed its revenue target.
In an interview, Mr. Lynch said the company had made a pretax profit in 2022.
“We are not targeting to become hugely profitable right now, but we are targeting to have cash flow that enables us to reinvest in the growth areas,” he said.
Mr. Lynch declined to give specific figures for overall revenue and profit in the interview. But his comments provided a glimpse of the health of the company’s business. Condé Nast, which is a unit of the privately held Advance Publications, doesn’t publicly disclose its financial results and only occasionally discusses them.
His comments echoed a note sent to Condé Nast staff members on Thursday, in which Mr. Lynch said that advertising revenue had grown year over year, while video views increased by “double digits.”
“This is an incredible collective achievement and a testament to your resilience and hard work,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.
In the interview, Mr. Lynch said that the company had fallen just shy of its annual revenue target, amid challenges that included closing its business in Russia and the effects of long lockdowns in China. The consumer business, a key growth area that includes subscriptions and e-commerce, such as partnerships and brand collaborations, did not quite meet its goal.
“Our e-commerce business grew close to 20 percent year over year,” Mr. Lynch said. “We had a goal of slightly higher than that but in hindsight it was a little unrealistic.” He added that subscriptions were “slightly below” their target in 2022.
But, he said, “we grew our revenues, grew our advertising business — I don’t think there are very many companies like ours that can say that.”
According to a person with knowledge of the company’s finances, Condé Nast had revenue of nearly $2 billion in 2021. Mr. Lynch has told The Wall Street Journal that the company had turned a profit in 2021 for the first time in years.
In 2022, total revenue grew again, though it did not cross the $2 billion threshold, the person said.
The company in recent years was losing $100 million annually. Mr. Lynch, who was brought on board in 2019, has presided over an effort to consolidate operations globally and diversify revenue streams.
The results stand in contrast to many other media companies. CNN, Vice, Gannett, Vox Media and NPR have all announced layoffs in recent months, citing weaker advertising revenue.
On Thursday, Mr. Lynch announced in the company memo that Jackie Marks, the chief financial officer, would leave in early March. Ms. Marks has held the role since March 2021. Mr. Lynch declined to comment further on the circumstances of her departure.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
