Mail lifted by digital expansion

Daily Mail & General Trust posted rising profits today despite the bleak British newspaper advertising market.

The company banked a 7% rise in pre-tax profits to £108.7m (€159.2m) for the six months to April 2.

It came on the back of a 2% hike in revenues to £1.08bn (€1.6bn) as its business-to-business arm and expanding digital operations offset a fall in advertising sales at its national and regional newspapers.

DMGT said profits and revenues were down at Associated Newspapers, which includes The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard.

They also fell at its regional arm Northcliffe, which is home to papers such as The Bristol Evening Post, Grimsby Telegraph, Lincolnshire Echo and Leicester Mercury.

Northcliffe is undergoing a major restructuring after DMGT cancelled plans to sell it earlier this year.

The Aberdeen titles are being sold and job cuts across the company are saving millions of pounds.

DMGT said: “At Associated Newspapers, circulation figures are solid and we are seeing some modest improvement in the display advertising market for our national titles, but not in their classified advertising.

“We are encouraged by the progress being made on the further restructuring of Northcliffe, but there is little sign of an advertising recovery in regional newspaper titles.

“Nevertheless, we still hope to achieve modest progress for the full financial year compared to last year.”

DMGT added that the distribution of Metro continued to average over one million copies a day and rose 10% in March with the launch of the free newspaper in Liverpool and Cardiff.

The company, which also owns Teletext, said its business-to-business divisions performed well, while digital operations such as Jobsite, Find a Property and Prime Location increasing revenues by 53% to £21m (€30.8m).

Panmure Gordon analyst Alex DeGroote said the group figures were “slightly ahead of our expectations”.