Impresa

Impresa closed 2025 with flat revenues but a clear, cost-driven recovery in underlying profitability, returning to net profit after a goodwill-distorted 2024 and marking its strongest reported operational and net result since 2021. The net profit is modest in absolute terms, €1.2 million on revenues of €181.8 million, but the context matters. In 2024, the group had recorded a net loss of €66.2 million, almost entirely because of a €60.7 million goodwill impairment on its television assets that had no recurrent counterpart in 2025.

Adjusted for that impairment and measured on a recurrent basis, the 2024 comparable loss was €5.5 million, and the recovery to €1.2 million profit in 2025 represents a genuine €6.7 million improvement in underlying performance. This is not a growth story, recurring revenues grew only 1.4%, but a cost discipline story, with three consecutive years of recurrent cost reduction producing a 23.8% improvement in recurrent EBITDA and a meaningful expansion of margins.

Impresa: key financial indicators 2024–2025

Adjusted to exclude goodwill impairments. Source: Impresa Resultados 2025, published via CMVM, 5 March 2026.

Impresa, SGPS, S.A. is Portugal’s leading communications group, listed on Euronext Lisbon, with its origins in 1973. It operates through two principal business segments: television, centred on the SIC channel family and the streaming platform Opto; and publishing, centred on the weekly newspaper Expresso and a portfolio of magazines.

The group is majority-controlled by Impreger, S.A., a holding company of the Balsemão family, whose patriarch Francisco Pinto Balsemão founded the group and led it for decades; his son Francisco Pedro Balsemão is the current CEO.

In November 2025, Impresa announced an investment agreement with MFE – MediaForEurope N.V. (the Berlusconi family’s pan-European broadcasting group, which controls Mediaset in Italy and Spain) under which MFE will subscribe a capital increase granting it a 32.9% stake in Impresa for up to €17.3 million. The CMVM approved the transaction in March 2026 without requiring MFE to launch a full takeover bid.

Impresa: media asset map

Signals

Cost discipline, not revenue growth, is driving the recovery

Total revenues fell 0.2% to €181.8 million. On a recurrent basis, excluding indemnities and gains on asset disposals that affected both years, revenues grew 1.4% from €178.4 million to €180.8 million. That is a modest improvement, and it is not the main story. The main story is costs.

Recurrent operating costs fell 0.8% in 2025, marking the third consecutive year of reduction under the “Impresa 2028” strategic plan, which targets improvement in operating margins through cost optimisation and capture of internal synergies. Over three years this has been a structural, not opportunistic, process: successive rounds of renegotiation, headcount adjustment, and operational consolidation have lowered the cost base while revenues have remained broadly stable.

The result is a 23.8% improvement in recurrent EBITDA from €15.6 million to €19.3 million, with the recurrent margin expanding from 8.6% to 10.6%. Financial results also improved, with the net financial charge falling from €12.4 million to €11.1 million, driven by a combination of lower average interest rates in 2025 and a reduction in average net debt over the period. Net remunerated debt fell from €130.9 million to €126.9 million, a reduction of €4.0 million, reversing two years of debt accumulation.

SIC remains Portugal’s most-watched television channel

The television segment, which accounts for 86% of group revenues, recorded revenues of €157.0 million, essentially unchanged from €157.5 million in 2024. Within that flat headline, reported EBITDA fell 3.7% to €17.6 million, reflecting the absence of non-recurring items that had supported the 2024 figure; on a recurrent basis, television EBITDA grew 17.0% from €15.2 million to €17.7 million, with the recurrent margin expanding from 9.6% to 11.3%.

Audience performance was strong. The SIC channel family closed 2025 with 19.1% total market share, up 0.2 percentage points on 2024, making it the only channel group to grow against both RTP and TVI. SIC was the most-watched channel in mornings, prime time, and weekday afternoons, and its news flagship Jornal da Noite led its time slot throughout the year. The primary generalist channel closed at 14.5% consolidated average share and 11.8% in the key commercial demographic (adults 25–64, classes A/B, C, D). The thematic group, SIC Notícias, SIC Mulher, SIC Radical, SIC Caras, SIC K, and SIC Novelas, reached 4.5% combined share, up 0.3 percentage points.

Strong audience performance has not, however, translated into advertising revenue growth. The filing does not disclose advertising revenues separately, but the group’s introduction in 2025 of a new commercial model for the Jornal da Noite, limiting advertising breaks to two minutes and positioning them at moments of highest viewer attention, suggests continued pressure on traditional advertising monetisation, and an effort to improve yield per spot rather than volume in response to structural competition from digital platforms.

Opto recorded its best year on record, but the opportunity remains ahead of it

Opto, the group’s subscription video-on-demand platform, reached 43,303 subscribers at year-end, accumulated 72.4 million plays across 2025 (a monthly average exceeding 6 million), and grew unique users by 39.4% to 2.7 million. The growth of 57% in plays year-on-year confirms genuine momentum. The content driving that performance was primarily SIC’s own fiction output, the telenovelas Senhora do Mar, A Herança, A Promessa, and Vitória, together with the reality format Casados à Primeira Vista.

The strategic logic is coherent: Opto functions as a direct-to-consumer complement to SIC’s linear broadcast, deepening monetisation of content that the group produces primarily for free-to-air. Distribution agreements with Disney+ (for Vitória) and Amazon Prime Video (for Lua Vermelha: Nova Geração) further extend the reach of that content beyond Opto’s own subscriber base and provide incremental revenue from content licensing.

Publishing continues to contract, but Expresso holds its editorial position

The publishing segment generated revenues of €22.3 million, down 4.9%. Operating costs fell 4.0%, largely tracking the revenue decline, and recurrent EBITDA was €1.9 million, down 14.8%, with the recurrent margin contracting from 9.3% to 8.4%. The segment is small relative to the television business and its financial contribution is limited. What the filing emphasises instead is Expresso’s editorial standing: the weekly newspaper was Portugal’s most sold publication for the ninth consecutive year, averaging 83,000 copies per edition in total paid circulation. Digital paid circulation exceeded 50,000 copies, a 3.4% increase year-on-year. The group’s overall digital footprint reached 4.2 million average monthly unique visitors across all websites (the best year on record) and Impresa led the inaugural audited podcast rankings in Portugal with more than 57 million downloads across the year, representing 37% of the audited market.

In 2025, Impresa launched a bundled subscription combining digital access to Expresso, SIC Notícias, and The New York Times, an indication that the group is developing its subscription model across platforms rather than title by title, and positioning Expresso as a premium information brand rather than a standalone newspaper.

The MFE investment changes the ownership structure and strategic horizon

The most consequential development for Impresa’s future was not in the income statement. In November 2025, MFE – MediaForEurope announced it would subscribe a capital increase of up to €17.3 million at €0.21 per share, resulting in a 32.9% direct stake in Impresa. The CMVM ruled in March 2026 that this transaction did not trigger an obligation to launch a full takeover bid, concluding that the agreements do not confer dominant influence over Impresa. Three MFE nominees joined the Impresa board at the extraordinary general meeting of 10 March 2026.

For MFE, the transaction represents pan-European positioning: Portugal would become a third southern European broadcasting market alongside Italy and Spain. For Impresa, it brings fresh capital that reduces financial pressure, an industrial partner with substantial scale in television production and advertising, and a stated commitment to a “pan-European strategic vision.” Whether the partnership generates concrete operational synergies in content production, advertising sales, or technology remains to be demonstrated in 2026 and beyond.

The underlying picture: a cost-led recovery with a strategic inflection ahead

Impresa’s 2025 results mark a meaningful improvement from a period of accumulated financial pressure. Three consecutive years of recurrent cost reduction have lowered the break-even threshold, and the combination of slightly growing recurrent revenues and a tightened cost base has restored operating profitability to levels not seen since 2021. SIC retains its leadership in Portuguese free-to-air television. Expresso retains its position as Portugal’s most sold weekly newspaper. Both assets generate significant audiences and meaningful advertising and subscription income.

The challenge ,shared by virtually every commercial broadcaster and newspaper publisher in Europe, is that audience leadership does not automatically translate into revenue growth when digital platforms continue to absorb a growing share of advertising budgets, and when print circulation declines irrespective of editorial quality. The “Impresa 2028” plan addresses the cost side of that equation systematically. The MFE partnership is intended to address the scale side. Neither alone resolves the structural question, but together they represent the most substantive repositioning the group has undertaken in many years. The 2025 numbers are the floor on which that effort is being built.