Financial Performance in 2025

Lagardère posted its strongest financial results in years in 2025. Group revenue reached €9.35 billion, up 4.6% on a reported basis and 3.8% on a like-for-like basis, stripping out currency effects and acquisitions. Recurring EBIT, the group’s headline profit measure, hit a record €641 million, an 8.1% increase year-on-year. Profit attributable to shareholders climbed 21% to €203 million, up from €168 million in 2024.

Cash generation was equally impressive. Cash flow from operations before income taxes (CFFO) rose 14% to €573 million, enabling the group to pay down debt aggressively. Net debt fell from €1.855 billion at end-2024 to €1.6 billion by December 2025, bringing the leverage ratio below 2x for the first time in recent years, landing at 1.96x. A proposed ordinary dividend of €0.67 per share, flat on the prior year, rounds out what is, by any measure, the group’s strongest overall performance in years.

Divisional performance at a glance (FY2025)

What Lagardère Owns

Lagardère operates two core divisions and a much smaller third arm that houses most of its remaining media and journalism assets.

Lagardère Publishing (€3 billion revenue, €312m recurring EBIT) is the world’s third-largest trade book publisher, encompassing Hachette Livre in France, Hodder & Stoughton and John Murray in the UK, Hachette Book Group and Little, Brown in the US, and Anaya in Spain, along with Partworks and Board Games. Recent acquisitions include Sterling Publishing (Union Square) in November 2024 and Dutch games company 999 Games in April 2025.

Lagardère Travel Retail (€6.1 billion revenue, €334m recurring EBIT) is by far the group’s largest business. It operates airport and railway concessions (shops, duty free stores and restaurants) in over 50 countries, with recent expansions at Amsterdam Schiphol, Auckland International and Phnom Penh’s new Techo International Airport.

Lagardère Live (€219 million revenue, recurring EBIT loss of €5m) is the residual media, news and entertainment division. It is the part of the group most relevant to media ownership researchers (and the part the annual results treat most briefly).

Lagardère Live: media assets and key editorial concerns

Signals

The media arm loses money and is shrinking

At €219 million, Lagardère Live accounts for just 2.3% of group revenue. Its recurring EBIT loss of €5 million, while a dramatic improvement on the €22 million loss in 2024, means that Lagardère’s entire journalism and broadcasting portfolio, France’s only national Sunday paper, three radio stations, and digital news outlets, still fails to cover its costs. Crucially, the improvement was achieved entirely through cost-cutting, described as “significant savings” at Lagardère News and Radio. Like-for-like revenue for the division was flat at +1.4%. There is no disclosed growth strategy for the media assets.

Paris Match is gone, and barely mourned

The sale of Paris Match, one of France’s most iconic magazines, completed on 1 October 2024. The report references it only in passing, as a €38 million scope reduction explaining the revenue gap in Lagardère Live, and as the source of a minor tax-related gain. For a title that has been central to French cultural and political life since 1949, its disposal to Czech group CMI warrants more scrutiny than a footnote in a cash flow table.

Radio advertising is declining, with no response on the table

The report notes that Lagardère Radio’s results were supported by audience growth at Europe 1, but were offset by “the decline in the advertising market and music radio stations.” No forward-looking strategy for addressing the structural decline in radio advertising revenue is outlined anywhere in the document. For media analysts, the silence is as notable as the admission.

The parent company now sets the editorial and CSR framework

A detail that deserves wider attention: the report reveals that in December 2025, Louis Hachette Group, Lagardère’s parent company, ultimately linked to Vivendi and the Bolloré empire, defined a “common CSR strategy for all its activities,” covering Lagardère and Prisma Media together. Lagardère is no longer setting its own strategic framework. It is operating within one defined at the parent level. The implications for newsroom independence at Europe 1, Le Journal du Dimanche and associated outlets have not been publicly examined.

Arnaud Lagardère tightens personal grip on the retail crown jewel

The report discloses that Dag Rasmussen, long-serving CEO of Lagardère Travel Retail, retired effective 1 March 2026. Arnaud Lagardère has been appointed Non-Executive Chairman of the Travel Retail board, tightening family control over the division that generates over 65% of group recurring EBIT. This consolidation of personal oversight over the group’s most commercially vital unit, mentioned in a single paragraph under “significant events,” is worth flagging for those tracking governance at the intersection of French media and business power.

Le Routard acquisition hints at a content IP strategy

Hachette Livre’s acquisition of the Le Routard brand (France’s best-known travel guide series, which it has published since 1975) and the move to 100% ownership of Routard.com may look minor. But it signals an intent to own rather than merely publish content IP, at a time when travel information is under intense pressure from AI-generated content and search. For media watchers, it is a small but telling strategic signal about where Hachette sees value in the content landscape.