Ringier presents annual figures in an artistic guise

 For the tenth time, the Swiss media publisher Ringier is presenting an artistically designed annual report and looking back on a successful year. Last year, Ringier achieved a significant increase in turnover and a slight increase in profit. In addition to the increase, the publishing house invested 60 million Swiss francs in new products. Ringier Group CEO Martin Werfeli justifies the small increase in profits by a high burden due to investments in 27 new titles, as reported by the news agency SDA. Among other things, the 2006 accounts were burdened by the initial losses of the five newly launched daily newspapers (including Heute and Cash Daily). Publisher Michael Ringier explained that despite the large investments worth CHF 60 million, the business result for 2006 was very respectable. Profit exceeded the previous year's record figure by 1 percent and rose to CHF 67.8 million. Sales increased by 6.5 percent to 1.34 billion. In Central and Eastern Europe in particular, the company recorded significant sales growth of 15 percent. Business in Asia also developed positively.
While advertising revenues in Switzerland increased by more than 8 percent, circulation revenues fell by just under 4 percent. Newspaper sales fell by 3.6 percent. As Werfeli announced, the circulation development of Blick and SonntagsBlick was once again extremely unsatisfactory.
In the current year, the company would like to expand its existing titles in the direction of media networks. Ringier is aiming to intelligently link several distribution channels - from print to TV, radio, Internet, mobile devices and events.
This year's annual report was designed by New York artist Ryan Phillips. He based his layout on the works of the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider from the 1930s. Eleven illustrations enliven the dry figures of the annual report and ensure that the annual report is not only of interest to number crunchers.