The media group's underlying revenues, which includes the impact of acquisitions made in 2007 and 2008 and excludes revenue from the service contracts in respect of the disposed businesses, decreased 2.7%.
Falling advertising revenues contributed to the group's overall revenue decline. Actual ad revenues in the period fell 3.1% and on an underlying basis, ad revenues dropped 4.3%. Trinity said month-on-month volatility remains and it expects this to continue for the remainder of the year.
Circulation revenues also fell by 1.2% in the period with a decline of 1.1% for the regionals, such as Birmingham Mail, and 1.3% for the national titles.
These losses were softened by a 44.1% gain in Trinity's digital revenues in the 17 weeks ending April 27. This includes a 38.6% increase in regional digital revenues and a 95.3% rise in national digital revenues.
Trinity also strengthened its digital portfolio during the period after completing the acquisition of The Career Engineer and Rippleffect Studio for a combined initial consideration of £5.1m, with a potential deferred payment of up to £3m.
The group said it would remain cautious about trading prospects for the remainder of the year amid the uncertainty in the UK economy.
It said: "These [uncertain] market conditions are adversely impacting consumer confidence and spending with the effect that businesses are curtailing marketing budgets to offset the prospect of slowing revenues.
"This has resulted in the advertising environment remaining difficult and volatile in the period since our last update at the end of February. Given this uncertain economic outlook for the UK, we remain cautious about trading prospects."
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