EMI’s recorded music division generated £58 million of profit last year, even though revenues tumbled 10 per cent in a year in which 2,000 employees were let go.

The profit marks a recovery from last year’s loss of £142 million and demonstrates that the British music major, which is home to artists such as Coldplay and Lily Allen, can earn money even though it has been loaded with £2.7 billion of debt by Terra Firma, its owner.

Elio Leoni-Sceti, the chief executive, said that the results – the first full year since Guy Hands’s Terra Firma bought it – showed that EMI had held up during a year in which the company lost about a third of its global workforce. “The market declined about 9 per cent in the period, and we were slightly behind that,” the chief executive said.

EMI said that its worldwide market share eased from 9.5 per cent to 9.3 per cent in the year to March, helped by Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, which was the bestselling album released last year.

However, EMI Music, as its recorded division is known, omitted several key figures. Mr Leoni-Sceti declined to spell out the costs of restructuring, which are likely to be significant – and which were left out of the £58 million free cashflow generated after interest and tax.

The Italian chief executive added that EMI passed its covenant test in March – required by Citigroup, its lender – to maintain its borrowing, but that came after Terra Firma and co-investors injected £84 million into the company as an “equity cure” to ensure that it met the test.

EMI also lifted underlying earnings threefold, before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, to £163 million, although about a quarter of the gain was attributed to the strengthening of the dollar against the pound.

Separately, Warner Music reported a pretax loss of $58 million (£39 million) in the three months to March and underlying earnings of $80 million, down 17 per cent.

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