Caltagirone Editore

Caltagirone Editore’s 2025 results present two entirely distinct financial stories depending on which line of the accounts you read first. The income statement shows a company barely breaking even on its journalism operations, with a net profit of just €626,000, down from €8.2 million the year before, and an operating loss of €27.1 million. The comprehensive income statement shows a company whose equity grew by €158 million in a single year, driven by a sharp increase in the fair value of the listed shares it holds as financial investments. Both pictures are accurate. Together they describe a newspaper group that has become increasingly dependent on the performance of a large financial portfolio to offset the structural weakness of its publishing business.

Caltagirone Editore: key financial indicators 2024–2025

Source: Caltagirone Editore Board of Directors’ press release approving 2025 results, 9 March 2026

Caltagirone Editore SpA is a Rome-based media company listed on the Euronext Milan exchange. It was founded in July 1999 following the Caltagirone family’s acquisition of two of Italy’s most historically significant regional newspapers. Today the group publishes five daily newspapers, Il Messaggero, Il Mattino, Il Gazzettino, Corriere Adriatico, and Il Nuovo Quotidiano di Puglia, along with the free daily Leggo, distributed at railway stations, airports, and metro stations. The company also operates a network of news websites under its titles, which recorded 22.35 million average monthly unique users during 2025.

The company is majority-controlled by the Caltagirone family through Caltagirone S.p.A., the family’s diversified industrial and financial holding company, whose primary activities are cement, construction, and real estate. Azzurra Caltagirone chairs the media company’s board. The media operation represents only one part of the broader Caltagirone group, which reported revenues of €2.44 billion in 2025 largely driven by its construction and cement businesses.

Caltagirone Editore: media asset map

Signals

The journalism business is barely solvent on its own terms

Revenues fell 2.3% to €109.4 million, driven by declines across all three of the group’s main publishing revenue categories. Copy sales, print and digital combined, fell 8.4%, reflecting the continuing erosion of paid readership that affects all Italian newspaper groups. Print advertising revenue declined 1.6%, while internet advertising fell 4.7%. The simultaneous contraction of both income streams is particularly uncomfortable for a publisher with a structurally high fixed cost base: five daily newspapers with distinct editorial and commercial structures, and a workforce of 562 people.

Operating costs fell 2.0% to €109.0 million, largely through a 9.3% reduction in raw material costs (primarily paper) and a 2.4% reduction in labour costs. Personnel costs stood at €48.7 million in 2025, down from €49.9 million in 2024, and included €1.1 million in restructuring charges. The cost reduction broadly tracked the revenue decline, which is how EBITDA reached only €332,000, positive, but representing an EBITDA margin of approximately 0.3%. It is worth noting that the year-on-year swing in net profit, from €8.2 million to €626,000, is real but somewhat distorted by tax effects. In 2024, a pre-tax profit of €352,000 was amplified by a tax credit of €7.8 million; in 2025, a pre-tax loss of €5.9 million was partially recovered by a tax credit of €6.5 million.

The intangible writedown is an annual reckoning the group cannot escape

Each year, Caltagirone Editore is required to test the carrying value of its newspaper titles, the intangible assets with indefinite useful life that sit on the balance sheet to reflect the brands’ long-term journalistic and commercial value, against their estimated recoverable amount. Where the carrying value exceeds the recoverable amount, an impairment charge is taken. In 2025 that charge was €19.1 million, up from €15.0 million in 2024, and it is the single largest driver of the operating loss.

The carrying value of newspaper titles on the consolidated balance sheet was €57.7 million at 31 December 2025, down from €76.8 million a year earlier. At the current rate of impairment, this balance will continue to shrink materially each year. The escalating writedowns suggest that management’s own assessments of the long-term commercial prospects of its print titles continue to deteriorate. Combined with depreciation and other provisions, the total amortisation, depreciation, write-downs and provisions charge reached €27.4 million in 2025, against EBITDA of only €332,000.

A large financial portfolio keeps the company viable

The feature that makes Caltagirone Editore genuinely unusual among European newspaper publishers is the scale of its financial investment portfolio. On the consolidated balance sheet, equity investments and non-current securities amounted to €605.8 million at 31 December 2025, up from €386.9 million a year earlier, and now roughly ten times the carrying value of the newspaper titles themselves. This portfolio consists primarily of stakes in large Italian listed companies held as long-term strategic investments.

The income statement impact of this portfolio is felt through dividends received. The net financial result of €21.2 million, the line that bridged the gap between an operating loss of €27.1 million and a pre-tax loss of only €5.9 million, consisted almost entirely of dividends received on those listed shares.

The more dramatic effect appears in the comprehensive income statement, which records changes in asset values that are not recognised in the standard income statement. In 2025, the fair value recalculation of equity instruments held by the group produced a gain of €90.4 million (net of tax), and disposals of investments in equity instruments generated a further €72.0 million (net of tax). Together these account for most of the €163.1 million in total comprehensive income, and explain why consolidated equity rose by €158 million despite minimal net profit from the publishing operations.

The net financial position deteriorated sharply

The group’s net financial position moved from -€2.7 million at end-2024 to -€34.7 million at end-2025, a deterioration of €32 million. The filing attributes this primarily to net investment in listed shares: the group deployed €108.1 million in new equity investments and received €63.1 million from disposals of equity investments and non-current securities, a net outflow of approximately €45 million in portfolio activity, while operating cash flow from the publishing business was marginally negative at -€699,000 for the year. The deterioration in net financial position reflects portfolio expansion financed partly through greater reliance on financial liabilities: current financial liabilities on the consolidated balance sheet rose from €17.9 million to €32.0 million, of which €13.1 million relates to related-party borrowings.

The workforce is small and declining slowly

The group employed 562 people at 31 December 2025, down from 577 a year earlier. For a company that operates five daily newspapers with separate editorial teams in different Italian regions, this is a remarkably lean headcount, reflecting two decades of restructuring across Italian newspaper groups. Personnel costs of €48.7 million represent 44.5% of total revenues, high by industrial standards, but broadly typical for editorial operations that require trained journalists and specialised production staff.

Digital reach is substantial but not translating into revenue growth

The 22.35 million average monthly unique users recorded across the group’s websites in 2025 represent a meaningful digital audience by Italian standards. Il Messaggero, Il Mattino, and Il Gazzettino all have significant online readerships in their respective regions. Yet internet advertising revenues fell 4.7% in 2025, reflecting the structural concentration of digital advertising spending on global platforms rather than publisher properties, a pattern affecting virtually all European newspaper groups. The company’s stated outlook affirms a continued focus on enhancing multimedia editions and improving digital activities, but provides no quantitative targets.

The underlying picture: journalism sustained by capital rather than revenue

Caltagirone Editore occupies an unusual position in the European media landscape. Its journalism, in Il Messaggero, Il Mattino, Il Gazzettino, and the three regional dailies, is among Italy’s most institutionally significant: these are titles with histories stretching back to the 1870s and 1880s, rooted in the civic life of Rome, Naples, Venice, and the Adriatic and southern regions. Their continued publication is not commercially trivial. But the economics that sustain them have become structurally decoupled from the journalism itself.

The company’s financial portfolio, €605.8 million in listed equity holdings, has grown to dwarf the €57.7 million remaining on the books for newspaper titles. The accelerating pace of intangible impairments on newspaper titles indicates that management does not see the commercial trajectory of those assets improving. What has kept these titles publishing, at least for now, is the return on capital held outside the newsroom.