Beggars Group Revenue Rises 20% to £134 Million as XL Recordings Pays $23 Million Dividend

Beggars Group, the UK-based independent record company founded and led by Martin Mills, grew its total annual revenue 20% year-over-year to £134.48 million ($177 million) in 2025, according to a filing with the UK's Companies House made on Monday, August 24 (Music Business Worldwide).

The same filing revealed that XL Recordings, one of the labels Beggars owns, paid out a $23 million dividend to its shareholders. Beggars had increased its stake in XL to 51% in October 2024, converting it from a joint venture — an arrangement in which two or more parties share ownership — into a majority-owned subsidiary. That structural shift is the key to understanding why Beggars' headline numbers moved in opposite directions: consolidated turnover excluding joint ventures rose 51.5% to £113.97 million ($150.2 million), up from £75.21 million the year before (Music Week), while total operating profit fell 22.3% to £8.17 million ($10.8 million).

The profit decline came from the joint ventures Beggars still does not fully control. Those ventures recorded a combined £1.42 million operating loss in 2025, led by Rough Trade Records Limited at £714,532 and Matador's two entities — Matador Records Limited and Matador Recordings LLC — together contributing roughly £593,000. In 2024, XL had contributed about £3 million to Beggars' joint venture profit line; in 2025, because of the ownership switch, it contributed nothing there.

Strip out the joint-venture losses and the picture is brighter. Beggars' consolidated operating profit excluding joint ventures rose 22.5% year-over-year to £9.58 million ($12.6 million). Beggars also paid £2.6 million to XL's minority shareholders, as reported in the filing (RA).

Beggars owns or co-owns XL Recordings, 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, and Young Recordings. XL's catalogue includes recorded music rights to classic albums by Adele, Radiohead, and The Prodigy, alongside current signings such as Fontaines D.C. and Jim Legxacy. Across all its labels, Beggars released 30 new albums in 2025, down from 32 in 2024.

The group's 2024 results, reported the previous December, showed total revenue of $140 million with a 49% jump in operating profit to £10.5 million — a figure that, at the time, still counted XL as a joint venture rather than a consolidated subsidiary. In other words, much of the 2025 revenue surge reflects an accounting change: XL's earnings now sit fully inside Beggars' books rather than being reported as a share of a partnership.

For a company incorporated in February 1979 and still headquartered at 17/19 Alma Road in London, the numbers tell a story of consolidation rather than explosion. Beggars has been buying up more of what it already helped build, and the 2025 filing is the first full year in which that bet shows up on the top line.