Hubert Burda Media is looking back on a satisfactory financial year despite Russia’s war of aggression in Europe, skyrocketing energy and production costs, and high inflation.
Hubert Burda Media has a positive assessment of the 2023 financial year. Notwithstanding the current geopolitical challenges that include Russia’s aggression in Europe, skyrocketing energy costs, continuing inflation and persistently low consumer confidence, the Burda Group’s outlook for 2024 is optimistic. In the previous year, the Group posted revenues in excess of €2.7 billion. These were generated by some 500 products in Germany and 17 other countries. Year-on-year, this equates to a 5.9 percent dip in revenue. At the end of 2023, the Group employed just under 10,000 people.
The year’s top successes were the further development of the digital business models, above all at BurdaVerlag, BurdaInternational in Poland and BurdaForward. The HolidayCheck Group also generated positive growth in the event and advertising sectors. The Group’s international investment arm, BurdaPrincipal Investments (BPI), expanded its portfolio by some 30 holdings.
Burda structures its operations into three divisions: Consumer Media, B2B Media and Services and Commerce. The Group’s objective is to offer products and services in every area that deliver the highest possible added value to customers – by providing helpful advice, information and inspiration, and entertainment.
The media and publishing businesses are combined under the umbrella of Consumer Media. Across the globe, Burda published 444 different magazines in 2023. The division’s aggregate revenues for the previous business year totaled €1.1 billion, a slight rise over 2022. On the domestic front, the division is comprised above all of BurdaVerlag and BurdaForward, along with the neighbourhood network nebenan.de. The publishing activities of BurdaInternational extend to a dozen countries, foremost Great Britain, continental Europe and Asia. Last year’s acquisition of the key local digital publisher Extra Online Media also set the stage for future-oriented multiplatform media operations in the Czech Republic.
The division B2B Media und Services encompasses all the professional offerings that Burda provides for enterprise customers. These include the majority shareholding in New Work SE (which operates the career network Xing), the employer rating platform kununu, BurdaDruck and the C3 agency group. In 2023, sales revenues in this division declined by 5.8 percent to a total of €505.5 million.
The Commerce division pools all the Group’s key internet-based activities in the areas of e-commerce and travel. Here the 2023 revenues dropped by 13.4 percent to €1.1 million. BurdaCommerce also includes Cyberport SE, CyberSolutions GmbH and Silkes Weinkeller GmbH. The HolidayCheck Group posted a significant increase in revenue and diversified its business model. In 2023, BurdaPrincipal Investments focused on artificial intelligence (AI), investing in the German company AlephAlpha and the French SaaS provider Modjo.
Hubert Burda Media remains optimistic about the current business year and is continuing to focus on innovation and growth in the digital sector. Specifically, Burda plans to reinforce the synergies between the various companies (most notably by deploying artificial intelligence, data-based monetarization and editing strategies) with the goal of further driving the transformation of entrepreneurial and journalistic concepts. The emphasis lies on building new digital business models. Overall in 2024, Burda is expecting revenues to remain stable.
