The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Liverpool production company behind the likes of Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex and Geordie Shore has been revealed for the first time.
Documents filed with Companies House for Lime Pictures show its turnover fell from £69.5m to £50.8m in 2020.
Its pre-tax profits also declined from £5.7m to £3.2m, reports BusinessLive.
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The company was founded by Sir Phil Redmond in the early 1980s as Mersey Television and was acquired by All3Media in 2005.
All3Media comprises 40 production and distribution companies and is owned by Discovery and Liberty Global.
The first major production from Lime Pictures was soap opera Brookside for Channel 4 while it took over the production of Grange Hill, which Sir Phil Redmond had also created, in 2003.
Since 2016 the company has produced Celebs Go Dating for E4 and was also behind Free Rain for Netflix.
A statement signed off by the board said: "The decrease in profit is driven by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting delays in production which led to fewer deliveries of television programmes to broadcasters in 2020.
"The company continues to perform well across its portfolio of scripted and non-scripted continuing series and has been successful in securing new programme commissions.
"The Covid-19 pandemic created significant volatility during the year as well as uncertainty and economic disruption to the industry as a whole, however, the company has since returned to production levels comparable to before the pandemic."
