Eamonn and Brian Fallon, the founders of daft.ie, received a pre-tax dividend of €7.44m through their company DML Capital Ltd last year. This dividend was part of a total dividend payout of €19.49m to shareholders of Distilled Ltd, which operates popular websites such as adverts.ie, daft.ie, gumtree.ie, and donedeal.ie. The payout was made as the Distilled group’s pre-tax profits increased by 13% to €9.49m.
Newly filed accounts by Distilled Ltd reveal that the online business experienced a 9% increase in revenues, rising from €33.76m to €36.67m in 2022. The company’s pre-tax profits reached €8.4m in 2021. Daft.ie, which was established in 1997 by Eamonn and Brian Fallon, is owned by DML Capital Ltd on a 50/50 basis. This recent dividend payout of €7.44m follows a dividend of €5.87m received by the Fallons in 2021.
Distilled Ltd was established in 2015 following the merger of daft.ie and adverts.ie with Norway-based Schibsted Media’s donedeal.ie. As a result of the merger, Distilled and Schibsted each obtained a 50% shareholding. The €19.49m dividend payout in 2022 followed a payout of €15.37m in the previous year.
The details of the dividend payouts show that Adevinta Classified Media Ireland Ltd, a Norwegian-owned company, received dividends of €9.7m in 2022. Additionally, directors of Distilled Ltd received €1.94m, TNK Associates received €343,728, and ‘A’ ordinary shareholders received a modest dividend of €40,561.
According to a statement from Distilled, adverts.ie experienced a 34% growth in ads compared to pre-Covid levels. The website has been consistently adding over 250,000 new ads every month. Distilled also reported that daft.ie saw a “robust 7% year-on-year increase” in residential property sales volumes in 2022, supported by growth in new home completions.
