Berlingske Media

Berlingske Media, the Copenhagen publishing group behind Berlingske, B.T., Weekendavisen and Euroinvestor, described 2025 as a record year. Revenue rose 4.2% to DKK 646.7 million (€86.7 million), while operating result, defined by the company as EBITDA before exceptional items, rose 53.6% to DKK 94.6 million (€12.7 million). Net profit after tax was DKK 63.0 million (€8.4 million), down slightly from DKK 66.6 million (€8.9 million) in 2024, but the operating margin improved sharply from 9.9% to 14.6%. All four brands grew revenue and all four made money: the company itself says all four had “overskud og vækst” (profit and growth) compared with the previous year. The caveat is that these figures come from the company’s 11-page Annual Review (Årsberetning), not from a filed audited statutory annual report; the document contains no balance sheet, no cash-flow statement, no statement of equity and no auditor’s report. The disclosed figures show a much stronger operating margin, although the Annual Review does not provide enough cost detail to determine how much came from revenue growth, cost discipline or earlier restructuring.

The wider story is that the company changed hands twice in 13 months. On 3 December 2024 the Norwegian foundation-owned media group Amedia announced its purchase of Berlingske Media from Belgium’s DPG Media (reported in the Danish and international press at around DKK 750 million, or roughly €100.5 million; the parties did not disclose the price). Then on 15 October 2025 the Danish regional publisher JFM (Jysk Fynske Medier) and Berlingske Media announced a cross-ownership transaction in which JFM would take 30% of Berlingske Media and Amedia would take 30% of JFM, together with the establishment of a digital-advertising joint venture, STEP Network A/S. The 2025 financial year is therefore the first complete calendar year after Amedia’s December 2024 acquisition of Berlingske Media from DPG Media, and therefore the first year in which one of Denmark’s oldest media institutions operated under the control of a Norwegian foundation-owned media group; it is also the year in which the cross-ownership structure with JFM was announced. By the time the 2025 Annual Review was published in April 2026, the company presented itself under the new 70/30 Amedia-JFM ownership structure. The Danish Competition and Consumer Authority (Konkurrence- og Forbrugerstyrelsen) approved the establishment of the STEP Network joint venture on 13 February 2026 under a simplified merger procedure.

Berlingske Media: key financial indicators, FY2023–FY2025

Source: Berlingske Media A/S, “Årsberetning 2025” (Annual Review), an 11-page marketing document published 27 April 2026 alongside a press release issued in late April 2026. As reported by Ritzau on 25 April 2026 and republished across the Danish press, the group has not at the time of publication of this analysis issued a standalone audited Årsrapport for 2025; the figures above are the “selected key figures” the company chose to disclose, and they have not yet been independently verified through publicly filed statutory accounts. The audited Årsrapport for the year ended 31 December 2025 would normally be filed with the Danish Business Authority by 31 May 2026 (the five-month deadline). Comparable historical figures are sourced from the company’s own published statements. Berlingske Media A/S is registered at Pilestræde 34, DK-1147 Copenhagen K, CVR no. 29207313. Euro equivalents are convenience translations at Denmark’s central parity rate of 1 EUR = 7.46038 DKK, under which the Danish krone is maintained within a narrow band by Danmarks Nationalbank; they are presented for international comparability only and do not appear in the source document.

Berlingske Media: ownership and asset map

Sources: Årsberetning 2025 (ownership diagram, p.10); transaction press releases from Amedia, DPG Media and JFM (December 2024 and October 2025); Konkurrence- og Forbrugerstyrelsen decision of 13 February 2026 approving the STEP Network joint venture under simplified merger review; Bornholms Tidende reporting; Berlingske Media CVR record. The company reports 491 employees at the parent-entity level as of May 2025 per its CVR record.

Signals

A record year, but in operating terms, not in profit terms

Berlingske Media described 2025 as a record year (“2025 blev et rekordår”), with the strongest disclosed EBITDA margin in the three-year series published in the Annual Review. The way to read these numbers is to focus on the operating result, not the bottom line. Revenue grew 4.2%, not dramatic, but in a Danish print-and-digital market that the industry consistently describes as declining, growing at all is the harder achievement. The real story is that operating profit (EBITDA before exceptionals) jumped from DKK 61.6 million (€8.3 million) to DKK 94.6 million (€12.7 million), a 54% increase, while revenue grew only 4%. That means the company added roughly DKK 33.0 million (€4.4 million) of profit on some DKK 25.9 million (€3.5 million) of additional revenue. The implication is that the cost base barely moved while the new revenue dropped almost entirely to the bottom line. For a media business in 2025, that is unusual.

The net profit number is less flattering: DKK 63.0 million (€8.4 million) is actually down 5% from DKK 66.6 million (€8.9 million) in 2024. The gap between the EBITDA jump (+54%) and the net profit dip (-5%) sits in items the Annual Review does not break out: depreciation, amortisation, interest costs, taxes, and any one-off costs linked to the change of ownership in December 2024 or to the JFM transaction announced in October 2025. Until the audited Årsrapport is published, the precise breakdown cannot be verified. But the broad pattern, operating profit up sharply, accounting profit roughly flat, is consistent with a year in which the business is genuinely improving while accounting items related to the transition are absorbing some of that improvement.

Weekendavisen is the most profitable brand by a wide margin

Berlingske, the largest title by far, generates 60% of group revenue but only 50% of group operating profit, meaning its operating margin is below the group average. B.T. delivers 17% of revenue and 14% of profit, also below average. Weekendavisen, by contrast, delivers 21% of revenue but 34% of profit, meaning its operating margin is materially higher than every other brand in the group. Applying these rounded brand shares to the disclosed group totals gives the following implied brand-level figures, which are derived from chart percentages and should be read as approximations rather than reported numbers:

The rounded brand shares imply that Weekendavisen generated approximately DKK 135.8 million (€18.2 million) of revenue and DKK 32.2 million (€4.3 million) of EBITDA in 2025, an implied operating margin of around 24%, almost twice the group average and high by any standard for a print-and-digital publisher.

This matters because Weekendavisen is a weekly broadsheet, not a daily, with a small but loyal subscriber base that is now mostly digital. The Annual Review shows digital subscribers growing from near zero in 2018 to roughly 17,000 by the end of 2025. The economics, fewer titles per year, a paid model that has converted to digital faster than the parent paper, and a culturally distinct conservative-intellectual readership, make Weekendavisen disproportionately profitable. In any scenario where Amedia rationalises the group structure or shifts editorial resources, Weekendavisen is the asset that subsidises the rest.

B.T. swung from loss to profit: the biggest single-year turnaround

The Annual Review says B.T. went from a loss in 2024 to a healthy profit in 2025, with revenue up 11%. Applying the rounded brand share to the disclosed group total implies roughly DKK 13.2 million (€1.8 million) of operating profit and roughly DKK 109.9 million (€14.7 million) of revenue, and bt.dk averaged 2,088,080 monthly visitors in 2025. On those numbers, B.T. has gone from being the group’s loss-leader to being the third-most-profitable title in the house in absolute krone terms. The 11% revenue growth, well above the group’s 4%, suggests B.T.’s tabloid model is finding traction in digital advertising and possibly in paid digital subscriptions, though the report does not break out the mix.

This is also the most politically interesting movement in the report. B.T. is the only tabloid in the Berlingske portfolio, and the company describes it explicitly as Denmark’s only right-of-centre tabloid. The combination of a profitable centre-right tabloid, a profitable centre-right broadsheet (Berlingske), and an unusually profitable conservative weekly (Weekendavisen) gives the group what no other Danish media house currently has: a full-spectrum, ideologically consistent, financially sustainable portfolio on the right of the Danish political centre. That this consistency now sits inside a Norwegian foundation-owned holding structure is the political subtext that runs through every page of the report.

The change of control: from DPG Media to Amedia, then JFM joins as a partner

Berlingske Media has had four different owners in 25 years: Orkla (Norway, 2000–2006), Mecom (UK, 2006–2015), DPG Media (Belgium, 2015–December 2024), and Amedia (Norway, December 2024–present). The change to Amedia is qualitatively different from the previous three because Amedia is owned by a Norwegian foundation (Amediastiftelsen), not by a listed corporate or a private-equity vehicle. That has two consequences. First, Amedia is not under pressure to extract dividends quickly or to flip the business on a 3-to-5-year horizon: foundations can take a longer view. Second, Amedia’s strategic logic is editorial scale across the Nordics: at the announcement Amedia had over 100 Norwegian titles, a 20% stake in Bonnier News Local (which co-owns roughly 80 Swedish regional papers), and now Berlingske in Denmark. The 30/30 cross-ownership with JFM, announced 15 October 2025, extends that scale into Danish regional publishing; JFM owns roughly 14 regional dailies, more than 40 weekly papers and the national daily Avisen Danmark, with revenue of approximately DKK 1.85 billion (€248 million) and EBT of about DKK 5 million (€0.7 million) in 2024.

In other words: the Berlingske Media that closed 2025 is no longer a standalone Danish media house. It moved toward a 70/30 Amedia-JFM ownership structure after the October 2025 alliance announcement, with the related STEP Network digital-advertising joint venture approved by the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority on 13 February 2026 under simplified merger review. The alliance positions itself as the national-and-Copenhagen pillar of a Nordic media bloc that, taken together, claims contact with around 2 million Norwegian daily readers and more than 1 million Danish readers, and that is consciously positioning itself in opposition to the global tech platforms (Google, Meta, TikTok) that have captured most of the advertising spend in the Nordic markets over the past decade. The board reflects this: the chair is Anders Møller Opdahl, who is also CEO of Amedia. CEO and publisher Anders Krab-Johansen, in place since 2017, remains.

What to watch in 2026

First, the implementation of the JFM alliance. The 30/30 cross-ownership and the associated STEP Network digital-advertising joint venture cleared the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority on 13 February 2026 under simplified merger review. Implementation, joint commercial operations, shared technology, and any reconfiguration of editorial functions, will run through 2026 and beyond. JFM controls a large slice of Danish regional and weekly newspaper distribution; combining it with Berlingske Media’s national-and-Copenhagen titles creates the largest privately-held newspaper alliance in Denmark, with combined revenue of approximately DKK 2.5 billion (€335 million).

Second, the digital subscription pivot. Berlingske passed 100,000 paid subscribers in 2025, with digital now the larger share for the first time. Weekendavisen’s digital readership is small in absolute terms (approximately 17,000, chart-derived) but growing fast. B.T., which traditionally lived on advertising, reports 2,088,080 monthly visitors but does not disclose paid-digital numbers: its return to profit suggests either a successful paid wall or a sharp recovery in digital advertising rates. The +Fri subscription bundle announced jointly by Berlingske Media and JFM, modelled on Amedia’s +Alt product in Norway and intended to bundle access to multiple titles in a single subscription, is the operational test of whether the Nordic alliance can deliver something more than a brand portfolio. The +Fri product is not in the 2025 Annual Review and is a 2026 development; its actual launch date and pricing should be confirmed in the post-balance-sheet disclosures or the company’s 2026 reporting.