Trinity Mirror's profits plunge 28% as ad revenues fall

LONDON - Trinity Mirror's pre-tax profit for the last six months have fallen by £27.4m to just £70.8m on the back of falling advertising revenues.

Revenues for the six months to June 29 were down by almost £7m year on year to £460.8m, as ad revenues fell at its regional and national titles during the period.

The national titles, which include the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, and The People, suffered a 6.5% fall in ad revenues to £75.2m. The regional titles, including the Liverpool Post fell 6% year on year to £158.8m.

The group said ad sales have continued to fall and have dropped 15% year on year in July.

However, Trinity Mirror's digital revenues were in much better health and rose by 40.2% to £22.3m.

The group said it was on target to deliver at least £20m in cost savings in 2008. However, one-off restructuring costs, designed to create a more efficient operation, are estimated at £15m for 2008.

Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, said: "The numerous actions we took during the period to reduce our costs and improve our efficiency, product portfolio and balance sheet have served to partially off-set the impact of the serious downturn in advertising expenditure being experienced by consumer facing media businesses.

"We have implemented a further efficiency programme which will deliver at least an additional £20m of savings in 2009 by accelerating technological improvements to processes across editorial, advertising and pre-press.

"We believe that these initiatives alongside good portfolio management and our continued investment to build our digital revenues will see the group through this economic downturn and best position the business for growth when market conditions improve."

Trinity Mirror said that it remained cautious about trading prospects in the future due to the uncertain economic outlook, but expects its performance for the year to be in line with expectations following the trading update issued on June 30 2008.

The company's share price, which as taken a battering in recent months, has recovered some ground after a calamitous fall that saw it hit a low of 55.5p in mid July, having been worth 557p a year ago. Today, Trinity Mirror's shares were trading at 84.75p, up 2.1%.

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