The company, which publishes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard newspapers, said that its businesses were performing well, despite the slump.
Its said that while display advertising remains soft there are signs of improvement, with the decline seen in February down to 8% compared with the 15%-16% year-on-year declines seen in October and November 2001. It said it expected similar improvements, witnessed in February, to be repeated in March.
In a statement, the company said: "The group's businesses continue to perform well despite difficult trading conditions. They are reaping the benefit of investment over a long period and generally proving to be robust in terms both of market position and profitability."
DMGT, whose titles include London's Evening Standard along with its flagship Daily Mail national newspaper, said certain key advertising sectors were weak although its national titles had seen a rise in their circulation numbers. The ABC figures for the six months to February 2002 showed the Daily Mail up 3.4% and the Mail on Sunday up 2.6% year on year.
However, the company said classified advertising in the Evening Standard remained weak and that the key recruitment advertising market was still down over 40% year on year. The newspaper group said that it had introduced cost-cutting measures, but there were no immediate details available on what these might be.
The company said it still hopes its free daily Metro newspaper will break even by the end of the year, despite the advertising weakness.
"Metro is making good progress and, despite the advertising weakness, we still hope that it will be trading around break-even by the end of the year. In order to mitigate any effect of reduced revenues across the division, cost-saving initiatives have been introduced," the company said.
It said that its regional newspaper division Northcliffe Newspapers was continuing to perform well, with growth shown in overall advertising revenues.
The group's interim results to March 31 2002 will be announced on May 30.
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