By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief
In a release this week, Stockholm, Sweden-based audiobook company Storytel reported record profits for 2025, and said the company is well-positioned to meet its aggressive growth targets in 2026 and beyond.“2025 proved to be a defining year for Storytel Group, clearly affirming the strength of our business model,” wrote Storytel CEO Bodil Eriksson Torp, in a statement to shareholders. “Driven by solid subscriber growth in core markets, the introduction of several innovative product features, and exceptional publishing performance across all genres and formats, we achieved record profitability and cash flow.”
Storytel’s net profit grew to SEK 504 million ($57 million) in 2025, roughly double the SEK 213 million the company booked a year ago ($24 million). Topline revenue jumped 9.2% at constant exchange rates (CER), supported by 8.1% growth in streaming revenue and a record 18% increase in publishing revenue. With the strong results, the company’s board of directors proposed a dividend of SEK 1.50 per share, up from SEK 1 per share last year.
Driving the results, the company’s streaming segment added 220,000 new paying subscribers, ending 2025 with a total of 2.67 million subscribers, including 60,000 new subscribers in the Nordic region (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland) and more than 140,000 new subscribers in other territories, which include the U.S. (audiobooks.com), Bulgaria, Netherlands, Poland, and Turkey.
Torp pointed to several enhancements driving growth, including “synced listening and reading, a refined search function, and fully personalized content discovery.”
Bodil Eriksson Torp, CEO Storytel Group
The company’s record growth in the publishing segment in 2025 was “driven by a series of highly anticipated releases across both physical and digital formats, the CEO added. Another “key milestone” was the launch of a pay-per-book offering in the fourth quarter which, Torp said, “expanded the company’s catalogue with more than 35,000 English titles available for individual sales directly in the app.”
After delivering record results for 2025, Torp told shareholders that Storytel is well-positioned for the future.
“We expect the global book market to continue its growth for the foreseeable future, driven by the sustained rise of digital formats such as audiobooks and ebooks,” Torp said. “The scale of this opportunity is underscored by the fact that in our core markets of Europe and North America, the number of monthly active audiobook users nearly doubled between 2020 and 2025. With industry projections suggesting this user base will double again over the next five years, we see significant further growth potential across our entire footprint.”
Citing a “combination of organic initiatives and strategic M&A opportunities,” Torp said the company has set “a firm target of reaching at least SEK 870 million in EBITDA on an organic basis,” for 2026, and expects to “surpass SEK 1 billion in EBITDA and 3 million subscribers” for 2027.
“Thanks to the incredible hard work of our team members, we are proud to celebrate another record year,” Torp wrote, closing out her statement. “As we shape the next chapter of storytelling, we remain focused on creating meaningful, lasting value for our customers, authors, publishers, and shareholders alike. We enter 2026 with immense optimism.”