INM’s revenue down by 5% year to date

REVENUES at Independent News & Media (INM) have fallen over 5% since the turn of the year, on a constant currency basis.

The owner of the Irish Independent also said, in its latest trading update, that total group advertising revenue fell by 7.9% year-on-year and total circulation revenue was 1.5% lower than the corresponding period in 2010.

INM said group performance in April alone was impacted by “an unusually high number and confluence of public holidays”, with normal business patterns particularly disrupted around the Easter holiday period.

“However, normal trading patterns now appear to be returning and the group’s leading titles continue to focus on maximising market share,” management said.

In terms of an outlook for this year, as a whole, INM said that advertising conditions “still remain challenging”, adding that the market in Ireland “has yet to stabilise and remains very short-term and erratic”.

Management did, however, welcome the lowering of the VAT rate on newspapers from July, as announced in this week’s jobs initiative, saying it should provide some further stimulus for the Irish consumer.

An interesting period of activity in the trade of INM’s shares, which started with financier Dermot Desmond buying a 2%+ stake in the group, continued yesterday with Denis O’Brien — the group’s largest individual shareholder — upping his stake from 21.6% to just over 22%. INM’s former chief executive, Tony O’Reilly, currently holds a 13% stake in the group.

Meanwhile, INM chief executive Gavin O’Reilly has criticised a complaint made by Denis O’Brien’s representatives on the group’s board about non-executive director, Bengt Braun.

Mr O’Brien’s representatives — Paul Connolly, Leslie Buckley and Lucy Gaffney — this week questioned Mr Braun’s independence, given that he shares a role on the executive committee of the World Association of Newspapers with Mr O’Reilly.

Mr O’Reilly called the complaint “unusual”, and maintained that Mr Braun was fully independent and denied that the issue marked a commencement of previous hostilities between his family and Mr O’Brien — which had seemed to end following the group’s restructuring and refinancing work.