Austrian news agency group breaks through the 80 million mark with a sales increase of 6 percent and opens up further customer markets at home and abroad with a new AI product portfolio “APA News Assistant”
The General Assembly of the APA-Austria Press Agentur eG today, Wednesday, presented the annual financial statements 2024 of the Austrian news agency group in Vienna. The corporate turnover was therefore 80.3 million euros after EUR 75.8 million in 2023; This achieved sales growth was around 6 percent. The APA Group’s operational result (EBIT) in 2024 was EUR 3.0 million after EUR 2.6 million in the previous year. The annual result (EGT) unchanged EUR 3.2 million as in 2023. The average staff of the group according to the level of employment (full -time equivalent) was 516 after 511 in 2023.
APA as a lighthouse for news and technology
The executive APA board member Clemens Pig described the past financial year on the occasion of the presentation of the annual financial statements as a “performance show in the national and international super election year 2024, in which all business areas did an excellent work and contributed to the growth of the company. APA strategy Trusted Content & Trusted AI.
APA CEO Hermann Petz and APA supervisory board chairman Roland Weißmann confirm “The role of the APA as a robust and future-oriented platform for participating cooperative media with sustainable business and cooperation models for the entire Austrian media and communication market. We would like to thank all employees of the APA group for their successful financial year”.
Personalia in the APA committees
At the APA general assembly, the board mandates were confirmed by Alexander Mitteräcker (Der Standard), Eva Schindlauer (ORF) and Clemens Pig (APA) for another three years. Markus Raith (new Vorarlberg daily newspaper) was re -elected on the supervisory board for another three years. The Presidium of the APA board is unchanged from Hermann Petz (Tyrolean daily) as chairman, Eugen A. Russ (Vorarlberger Nachrichten) and Ingrid Thurnher (ORF) as deputy chairwoman and Clemens Pig (APA) as the executive board. The Presidium of the Supervisory Board unchanged Roland Weißmann (ORF) as chairman as well as Richard Grasl (Kurier) and Markus Mair (Styria) as deputy chair.
Highlights 2024
The essential Milestones and developments in the 2024 financial year include the editorial coping with major political events such as the Austrian National Council elections or the US presidential elections. For this purpose, extensive services from the APA editorial team (live blogs, projections, automated content) were rolled out in the new customer platform APA news desk. For the first time, the APA Newsdesk also enables topic-centered work. Different content formats such as text, audio, video, photo and graphics are thematically bundled for individual events and shown in new modules such as data or agenda.
In the APA-COM business area, consisting of APA-OTS, APA-Defacto and APA-PictureDesk, the new generation of the APA-OT-ONT manager was successfully put into operation for the shipping of multimedia press information, and the AI-based image system APA-Pix with fully automated fitting and image search was successfully used. For the integrated communication platform APA-PR-DESK, essential new online sources for national and international media observation and media analysis were opened up.
The APA-Tech business area with APA-IT and Gentics was shaped by strong growth in IT customer projects in Germany and Switzerland in the field of information management systems and realized a wide range of IT solutions in the areas of streaming, apps, archives and infrastructure in Austria.
The APA group’s AI highlight in 2024 represents the cross-company development of the APA news assistant for internal and diverse external customer applications in the field of AI-based editing, drawn-precise shortening, automated image search or prototypes for AI chatbots and AI live fact-checking.
Outlook 2025
“The effects of the high inflation, the third year of recession in a row without economic buoyancy and the uncertain international developments, accompanied by the central question of the protection of our media content towards the big tech and AI platforms, are great and diverse challenges. Again and again, one of these sprints will be the development of our new Ki editorial system, which we want to settle internationally and also with corporate newsrooms.
APA – Austria press agency
The APA – Austria Press Agency is the national news agency and the leading information service provider in Austria. It is owned by Austrian daily newspapers and ORF. The APA Group consists of the cooperative news agency (APA news) and several national and international subsidiaries and works with the latter in the business areas of information and communication management (APA-COMM) and information technology (APA-Tech).
The APA is one of only around 20 news agencies worldwide that are independent of the state and government. The multimedia reporting of the APA serves media as a reliable, independent, fast and fact -based source. In addition, the APA group with media observation, media analysis and distribution services also offers specialized solutions for communication specialist: inside in politics and business.
www.apa.at