Peel Media grew revenues last year as income from its flagship MediaCityUK development continued to rise.
In the year to the end of March 2013, income from tenants rose to £19.6m, up 14.6% from £17.1m the previous year.
The BBC is the 36-acre site’s principal tenant, with around 2,500 staff working for BBC Children’s, BBC Radio 5 live and other radio programmes, parts of Future Media, North West news, Learning, Sport and Breakfast.
The University of Salford occupies 100,000 sq ft while ITV has taken 62,500 sq ft to house over 500 staff including teams from CITV, Granada Reports, factual, entertainment, drama, post production, The Jeremy Kyle show and various business support services. ITV Studios also has a base there.
Peel Media made an operating profit of £20.8m, against an operating loss of £5.6m the year before. This was helped by the reversal of a £7.3m impairment registered against a multi-storey car park in 2011-12, and the fact there was no further write-down associated with the site’s buildings, now valued at £418.7m (still below their historical cost of £495.9m).
Once interest payments of £24.9m are factored in, Peel Media was left with a £4m pre-tax loss, although this is an improvement on a pre-tax loss of £29.3m the year before.
Last month, Peel Group completed a £325m refinancing deal on MediaCityUK to help it achieve its aim of full occupancy by the end of this year.
Peel did not want to comment further on its latest figures.
