Despite the weakening television advertising business, Bertelsmann has increased its revenues. Group sales rose to 14.6 billion euros from January to September, and internal growth was 0.8 percent, as the media, services and education company announced on Wednesday. In the same period last year, sales were 14.4 billion euros. Winning figures were not given.
The RTL Group, the largest division, has been struggling with the weak television advertising business for a long time and sales there have been declining. RTL revised its annual outlook downwards. Other areas of the Bertelsmann Group were obviously able to compensate for this in terms of overall revenue. Above all, the publishing business around the Penguin Random House group, which published Prince Harry’s book (“Reserve”), as well as the music division BMG, the service businesses of Arvato and the education division Bertelsmann Education Group contributed to growth.
On Wednesday, Bertelsmann also announced that the group had now sold its shares in the international call center services business Majorel to the French company Teleperformance. The deal had been known for a long time. Majorel was founded at the beginning of 2019. Bertelsmann and Saham entered into a partnership and combined some of their business areas to build a leading provider of customer service services – in the area of customer experience. They took the business public. In the 2022 financial year, the service company with more than 80,000 employees recorded sales growth of 16 percent to 2.1 billion euros. Now the sale took place.
Bertelsmann CFO Rolf Hellermann said of Bertelsmann’s outlook for the year as a whole that overall business development is expected to be positive. “On a comparable basis, we continue to expect a moderate increase in consolidated sales and an overall stable operating result.” Due to the loss of the contribution to the Group’s sales and operating result following the sale of Majorel’s shares, sales are expected to be stable compared to the previous year and a slight decline in operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda).
Press release press release Majorel
