Beggars Group‘s total annual revenue grew 20% YoY to GBP £134.48 million (USD $177 million) in 2025.
The figure, which includes Beggars’ income from labels it part-owns, was revealed in a filing with the UK’s Companies House on Monday (August 24).
The UK-based indie record company, founded and led by Martin Mills, owns or co-owns XL Recordings, 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, and Young Recordings.
Beggars’ total operating profit in the year fell 22.3% YoY to £8.17 million ($10.8 million).
Excluding JVs in which Beggars does not own a controlling stake, the firm’s consolidated turnover rose 51.5% YoY to £113.97 million ($150.2 million) in 2025.
The biggest factor in that double-digit leap: XL Recordings used to be a 50%-owned joint venture for Beggars, which meant it was treated as a JV in the firm’s books.
Beggars increased its stake in XL to 51% in October 2024, making XL a subsidiary, so all of the label’s sales and costs now sit inside Beggars’ consolidated figures.
XL works with artists such as Jim Legxacy and Fontaines D.C., and owns the recorded music rights to classic albums from Adele, Radiohead, and The Prodigy.
This movement in Beggars‘ categorization of XL (as a majority-owned subsidiary, rather than a joint venture) pushed two 2025 profit lines in opposite directions.
Beggars’ own group/consolidated operating profit (excluding JVs) in 2025 rose 22.5% YoY to £9.58 million ($12.6 million), while the firm recorded a combined £1.42 million operating loss from joint ventures (see below).
In 2025, Rough Trade Records Limited accounted for a £714,532 share of Beggars’ operating losses from JVs, while Matador Records Limited contributed a £215,183 loss share and Matador Recordings LLC added a £378,278 loss.
XL had put around £3 million into that joint venture op profit line in 2024, but (by dint of the 51% switch) put nothing into it in 2025.
Beggars‘ labels released 30 new albums during 2025, down from 32 in 2024.
The company listed its commercial successes as Pulp‘s More (Rough Trade), Big Thief‘s Double Infinity (4AD), David Byrne‘s Who Is The Sky? (Matador), FKA Twigs‘ Eusexua (Young), and Jim Legxacy‘s Black British Music (XL).
“Discovery of talent and supporting artists through their development stage and beyond is core to our business,” the Beggars report added. “We remain committed to investing in original new music foremost.
“We intentionally release a very small number of albums a year in a world that is flooded with music and devote the entire attention of our 250 staff worldwide to them. We were described this year as ‘a beacon of culture-defining A&R’.”
Average headcount across the group rose to 197 in 2025, from 169 a year earlier.
XL Recordings: turnover up, profit down
XL Recordings filed its own accounts for 2025 three days ahead of its parent, on Friday (August 21). The label turned over GBP £70.76 million (USD $93 million) in the year, up 12.6% YoY.
XL’s operating profit fell 28.4% YoY to £9.16 million ($12.1 million) in the period.
That £9.16 million operating profit is equivalent to 95.6% of the annual group operating profit that Beggars reported across all of its consolidated businesses.
XL released six new albums in 2025, with 82% of its turnover coming from outside the UK.
The firm’s post-tax profit came to £7.82 million ($10.3 million), down from £10.99 million in the prior year.
XL paid out total dividends of £17,608,441 ($23 million) during 2025, according to its accounts.
Those dividends were divided between its shareholders – Beggars Group and XL co-owner Richard Russell.
Beggars has held 51% of XL since October 2024, when it paid £2.6 million ($3.3 million) to acquire an additional one percent from Russell, who retains 49%.
XL previously paid £10 million in dividends to shareholders during 2024.
Beggars Group itself paid no dividend in 2025, having distributed £5 million ($6.4 million) to shareholders in 2024.
Control of Beggars Group was transferred in October 2024 to a trust connected to Martin Mills.
XL now sits above a cluster of Beggars-linked businesses, holding 100% of publishers Beggars Music Limited and Young Music Publishing, 87.5% of 4AD Songs, and 51% of Young Recordings, home to The XX and Jamie xx.
Both Beggars and XL flagged the same risks in their 2025 accounts. “Inflation continues to weigh on supply chain cost and overheads, and inevitably, label margins,” the reports state.
On copyright, Beggars‘ directors wrote: “As part of the recorded music industry, we continue to work with UK Government to protect and uphold the value of the UK’s great heritage of cultural IP rights and defend them in light of the international technological challenges that face them.”
The US recording rights to Adele‘s first three albums – 19, 21, and 25 – reverted to XL in 2021, at the end of a long-running licensing deal with Sony Music/Columbia.
XL/Beggars acquired the rights to Radiohead’s early albums via a divestment from Warner Music Group in 2016.
All 2025 currency conversions are based on the average GBP-USD exchange rate for 2025, as listed by the IRS. Figures for 2024 use that year’s IRS average rate.Music Business Worldwide
