East of England local news publisher Archant – whose private equity owner is negotiating to sell to the Gannett-owned Newsquest – has divested a clutch of apparently unprofitable specialist magazines to Kelsey Media, also of the UK. The magazines are: Agricultural Trader, Country Smallholding, Canal Boat, The Tillergraph, and Pilot. Archant retains its portfolio of regional magazines which, pre-pandemic, were the company’s most profitable brands.
For the year ended October 2020, the privately-owned Kelsey Media had £1.85m EBITDA on revenue of £21.36m (2019: £0.86m/ £24.33m). The company’s cash reserves were £2.8m – 5x the previous year. Late in the year, it had acquired World Soccer and Amateur Photographer magazines from TI Media (formerly Time Inc UK/ IPC Media) as part of its acquisition by Future.
