Bertelsmann achieved record revenues last year and is aiming for the same in 2023.

Revenues climbed by 8.3 percent to €20.2 billion in 2022, as the Gütersloh-based media, services and education group announced on Thursday. Earnings (operating EBITDA) remained almost stable at around 3.2 (previous year: 3.2) billion euros. "We expect a similar development for 2023 - i.e. sales of over 21 billion euros," Group CEO Thomas Rabe told the Reuters news agency. Operating profit is likely to remain stable in the current year, while net profit is expected to increase again following the elimination of one-off effects.

On balance, the Group's net profit for 2022 largely halved to 1.1 billion euros due to high sales gains in the previous year. While the TV subsidiary RTL, the publishing group Penguin Random House, the service provider Arvato and the music subsidiary BMG increased their revenue, only BMG and Arvato were able to increase their operating profit.

Most recently, the 2.2 billion dollar takeover of US publisher Simon&Schuster by Bertelsmann subsidiary Penguin Random House collapsed, costing the group 200 million dollars in compensation payments. Rabe also recently failed in France and the Netherlands in his plan to create national champions in the European television market around RTL in order to stand up to the competition from Netflix & Co. He had repeatedly brought up the possibility of RTL merging more closely with its competitor ProSiebenSat.1 in the medium term. The latter's CEO Bert Habets said on Tuesday that the resistance of the antitrust authorities had probably stopped RTL's strategy in terms of national champions for the time being. "I think this is a very clear signal, so I don't expect any opportunities on this front on the German market in the next few years either," said Habets, who himself was RTL CEO until 2019.

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Rabe reiterated that the company would focus on alliances and partnerships in future. Due to the recent antitrust decisions, a stronger merger with ProSiebenSat.1 is off the table for the time being. "We should not delude ourselves." But the company is prepared to cooperate in areas such as advertising marketing and streaming - even with its Bavarian rival.

RTL Deutschland took over Gruner+Jahr at the beginning of 2022 and is now massively scaling back the magazine business of the traditional Hamburg publishing house. Around 500 jobs will be cut, with around 200 of the total of 1900 full-time positions to be eliminated through the sale of titles. The sales process is progressing well, Rabe told Reuters. "We have received indicative offers this week, a lot of them and some really good ones." He is confident that the sales process will be completed by the summer. RTL has also signed the social plan for the employees affected by the restructuring.

Bertelsmann plans to invest five to seven billion euros between 2021 and 2026 and has already invested 2.2 billion euros. Acquisitions will tend to be small to medium-sized - except in the area of digital health, for example. "I could also imagine an order of magnitude of several million euros," said Rabe in the Reuters interview.

(Report by Klaus Lauer; edited by Olaf Brenner. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).

- by Klaus Lauer