“You are on the famous sixth floor. I moved in here with BUNTE in 1983,” Hubert Burda welcomed the guests at the Annual Accounts Conference. Since then, he added, many things had changed at the company: “The media world has experienced some dramatic and lasting changes,” the publisher described the effects of digitalization.

“We have recognized these market changes early on and have adapted innovatively. Hubert Burda Media has developed from a publishing house into a media group.” Besides the strong print media, the internet and moving images had become important: “We develop our brands into media communities, thus creating interfaces between print and online“, Burda stressed.

“The magazines remain the company’s core business and mainstay,” Jürgen Todenhöfer, Vice-Chairman of the Management Board, emphasized. They were not only a symbol of the multimedia group’s sound economic development, but also an element in the media mix of advertising agencies and – as strong brands – the ideal means to gain a foothold in growth markets. However, this business stagnated while turnover in the printing business even declined. “There is a need for action, and we have acted accordingly,” Todenhöfer pointed out.

This is why, in 2006, the group invested strongly in foreign publishing companies, direct marketing and the internet, a move resulting in an increase of external sales of 5.1 per cent to € 1.6 billion, despite the stagnation. The operating performance rose by 4.3 per cent to € 2.15 billion and the operating result remained stable. So since the partition of estate twenty years ago, when Dr. Hubert Burda took over sole management of the publishing houses and printing plants, the group’s turnover has more than tripled.

The digital business has meanwhile become one of the company’s most important business divisions. “We have strong growth rates here,” stressed Paul-Bernhard Kallen, Board Member Technology & Treasury. Turnover soared from € 37 million in 2000 to € 231 million last year, with media and commerce as the main growth areas.

In 2007, the media company is making further investments in these fields. The Managing Director of Burda Digital Ventures, Christoph Braun, presented two examples: With Edelight, Hubert Burda Media has acquired an interest in a social shopping platform. The gaming platform Alaplaya will be launched at the Leipzig Games Convention in August and is supposed to target young online players from all over Europe.

Marcel Reichart, Managing Director R&D, Marketing and Communications, demonstrated how today’s media communities worked. The video platform Sevenload, acquired two months ago, already shows 13 channels of various Burda brands with more than one million views. And the dog community www.hallohund.de is another example for how the company enters new areas of interest.