Three screenshots depicting Reach plc stories on Google Discover on desktop in late 2024 (before AI summaries started to be added).
Major cost cuts at Reach helped keep profits up in 2025 despite falling revenue across both digital and print.
Page views fell by 8% in the second half of the year as Google Discover referral traffic plummeted by almost 50%.
The UK’s largest commercial news publisher reported adjusted operating profit of £104.7m, up 2.4% compared to 2024.
[Read more: Reach CEO Piers North says publisher wasn’t too reliant on Google Discover; AI approach ‘mixture of courtship and courts’ ]
Revenue was down 3.7% or £20.2m to £518.4m. Adjusted operating costs were down by 5.2% or £22.7m to £416.4m, offsetting the revenue decline.
Headcount across Reach was down 4% compared to a year earlier from 3,579 to 3,423. Labour costs were down £3.5% or by £208.5m.
In September Reach announced plans to cut its editorial headcount by 186 via 321 redundancies and 135 new roles including many in video (although Press Gazette understands the final reduction was less than planned ). Earlier in the summer around 50 redundancies were made as a central sports team was created.
So far in 2026 Reach said it plans to close two out of three of its print production facilities.
Reach had its worst quarter of the year in Q4 with overall revenue down 5.6% year on year and digital down 7.8%. The best-performing sector in Q4 was print circulation (down 3.4%).
Across the whole year, digital revenue was down 0.9% to £128.9m.
The only sector to see annual growth was indirect digital revenue (up 2.8%). This includes revenue generated off-platform (ie on social media) or via programmatic website advertising. This growth was despite major declines in Google referrals.
Across Reach – which includes national brands Mirror, Express and Star and dozens of regional newsbrands – page views were up 6% in the first half of the year but then down 8%, mainly attributed to Google changes.
Chief executive Piers North told investors Google Discover traffic to Reach sites was down 46% in the second half of the year as the platform prioritises more user-generated content and video . Press Gazette reported in late 2024 that Google Discover had become Reach’s biggest single referrer of traffic.
North described the decline as “not really cliff-edge” but a “general degradation” or “regular decrease” since the summer.
North said of Google Discover: “There’s some positive signs. They talk a lot about the importance of local relevance. We’re yet to see that flow through, but we will continue to engage with them and take what lessons we can…”
Google referrals overall now makes up around 35% of Reach page views.
Wider Google search traffic is “relatively stable” but “still a little bit under pressure”, North said, despite AI summaries being added to the top of many search results.
The impact from Google’s changes increased as the year went on and the highest indirect digital revenue growth was in Q1 (up 11.8%), before falling to a drop of 8.4% in Q4.
Reach is now assuming that page views “will not see a recovery to former peaks”.
North said: “We’re now managing our business on the assumption that our on-platform volume will not return to its former height, certainly in the short term. On platform is still important to us, but it’s essential we spread our audiences across a wide range of sources and live up to that promise of being where our audiences are, and that will be through growing our off-platform audiences and that is where video plays its part.”
Reach is focusing more on video monetisation and its premium subscription launches, with six now live on the Manchester Evening News , Liverpool Echo, Wales Online, Daily Record, Leicestershire Live and the Express. Around £1m has been invested in the rollout and the target is to surpass 75,000 subscribers in 2026.
Four more are expected to be launched by the end of March including Birmingham Live and Bristol Live
North said “even a modest conversion rate” from subscriptions “can mean a very useful revenue stream in digital”.
At the end of 2025, just over a month after the first paywall was launched, the business was at around 15,000 paid subscribers. This included “some legacy subscribers from early experiments”, North noted. This is on top of 17,000 subscribers to e-editions which are counted separately.
Around 110 new specialist video roles are now embedded in newsrooms, largely producing short-form output, now creating over 300 social videos a day. Reach also has six in-house Studio facilities with teams creating longer-form content with opportunities for advertisers such as Tesco Mobile.
The page view drop also affected revenue from direct advertising deals and browser-based video monetisation which are based on scale.
But other platforms saw growth. North said social (including Facebook and Whatsapp) referrals grew 21% and now make up 27% of traffic. About a fifth (19%) of on-platform traffic comes directly.
Chief financial officer Darren Fisher noted Facebook and Youtube “are increasingly rewarding, engaging content”.
Off-platform audiences from the likes of Apple News were up 20% year on year with the US business doing “particularly well” via aggregators like MSN and AOL.
Meanwhile, e-commerce/affiliate revenue was up 4.5% in 2025. The OK! Beauty Box advent calendar nearly doubled sales, North said.
Print continues to make up three-quarters of revenue at Reach and was down 4.6% across the year to £388.1m.
The average age of its print readership is 52 so “will remain an important revenue stream for some years to come”, Fisher said, noting that the average print circulation decline over the past three years was 2.1%.
Fisher said further cover price increases can still be absorbed “as a lever to manage our print decline”.
Continued legal costs relating to historic hacking resulted in payments of £4.4m in the year. A provision of £4.7m remains and is the current best estimate of the amount required to resolve anything outstanding.
Also in 2025 Reach made £4m by selling offices in Guildford, Liverpool and Teesside. It is not expecting to dispose of any more property in 2026.
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