Condé Nast Expects Strong Revenue Growth in 2021 After “Very Difficult Year,” CEO Says

Magazine giant Condé Nast, publisher of titles including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Wired, had a “very, very difficult year” in 2020, thanks to the pandemic’s impact on advertising, CEO Roger Lynch says. But this year, he predicts, revenue will grow by “double-digit percentages,” and long term he thinks advertising will become much less important as a business as e-commerce, video and subscriptions grow.

Lynch, who joined in 2019 after a career in international cable television and later streaming video and audio, including as head of Pandora, is trying to transform the company and steer the 111-year-old institution through a time of immense change. Print advertising, long Condé Nast’s main source of revenue, is in decline, and tech giants Facebook and Google are gobbling up much of the digital advertising. At the same time, culture wars are roiling newsrooms across the country, and Condé Nast hasn’t been immune to the impact.