BMG posted its strongest year of growth in 2022, with annual revenues of $911 million (up 30% over last year) and made more than $400 million worth of acquisitions in the booming catalog market, the company announced Thursday in its annual earnings report.
The company’s annual operating EBITDA was up by more than 35% to $205 million.
Founded in 2008, the Berlin-based company has been a steady presence in the music industry, basing its strength on tried-and-true artists and catalogs that range from Adam Lambert to Cypress Hill, from T. Rex to the Trojan reggae label. Its publishing division is one of the biggest in the industry, and it has made bold moves into the music documentary business — including a major stake in the critically lauded David Bowie doc “Moonage Daydream.”
That growth has been led by outgoing CEO Hartwig Masuch, who is passing the torch to longtime exec Thomas Coesfield.
The company’s recorded-music business’s revenues grew by38% over 2021 and its publishing business boosted 26%, according to the report.
In addition to posting strong profits — its EBITDA margin for the year was at 22.5% — its “acquisition offensive” was on-brand as well, investing in catalogs by such steady earners as Peter Frampton, Jean-Michel Jarre, Fools Garden, Harry Nilsson, Simple Minds, Primal Scream, and the German labelTelamo.
Impressively for a traditionally European-focused company, BMG noted that more than half of its annual revenues for the year were generated in the U.S., with 12.2% in the U.K. and 8% in Germany.
Masuch and Coesfield said in a joint statement: “It was a historic year for BMG in which we grew our scale significantly, but just as importantly improved our capabilities, delivering more money more quickly than ever before to artists and songwriters with better service, underpinned by our core values of fairness and transparency.
“2022 proved once again that we are successful not in spite of those distinctively BMG values, but precisely because of them.”
