Condé Nast’s UK division experienced a significant decline in profits last year, with pre-tax earnings dropping by more than a third compared to the previous year. Newly filed accounts reveal that pre-tax profits, excluding exceptional items, fell 36% from £28 million in 2024 to nearly £18 million in 2025. This decrease came despite the company’s successful £64 million sale of its UK headquarters, Vogue House in London, in 2024.
Revenues generated within the UK also declined, falling 7% from £75.9 million to £70.6 million. However, an 18% increase in international revenues, rising to £29.7 million, helped maintain total revenues at around £100 million, close to the previous year’s figures.
A spokesperson for Condé Nast stated that the company remains profitable in the UK, noting that the reduction in profits reflects a period of planned investment in tailored client solutions. Restructuring costs more than doubled, increasing from £1.9 million to £4.3 million, primarily driven by severance expenses. Despite these costs, overall headcount remained relatively stable, decreasing slightly from 466 employees in 2024 to 461 last year. The company reported no major restructures in 2025, with isolated redundancies offset by continued hiring.
Additional factors impacting profitability included changes in pension scheme projections and wage inflation, according to the spokesperson. The highest-paid director outside the US, Natalia Gamero del Castillo Calleja, who resigned in August 2025, earned over £1.3 million.
The company’s leadership faced a notable change with the departure of Chief Executive Roger Lynch, who had been appointed in 2019 to oversee the company’s turnaround. Lynch left to become CEO of toy manufacturer Mattel. In discussing challenges facing the business, Lynch highlighted the impact of Google’s AI-generated summaries, which reduce the need for users to click through to original media content, describing this development as “another sort of death blow” to traditional online search traffic. He noted that Google searches accounted for only about a quarter of visits to Condé Nast’s websites last year.
The company’s revenue is heavily concentrated in seven major brands: Vogue, GQ, the New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, and Condé Nast Traveler, which together represent 85% of total income. Approximately 14% of revenue comes from newsstand sales and subscriptions, with the remaining 86% derived from advertising and other services.
Despite speculation about a potential sale to external buyers such as Jeff Bezos, chair of the Newhouse family holding company Advance, which controls Condé Nast, explicitly ruled out selling the publisher. Newhouse emphasized the family’s long-term commitment to the media business, stating they are not motivated by the prestige often associated with media ownership.
Earlier in 2025, Condé Nast announced plans to discontinue its women’s health magazine Self after 47 years of publication, reflecting ongoing strategic adjustments within the company’s portfolio.