Daily Mail group profits dip on first-half costs

By MARTIN FLANAGAN
Published on 25/05/2012 00:00

NEWSPAPER group Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) saw its first-half performance hit by the cost of disposals, restructuring and redundancies – but yesterday claimed annual earnings were still set to grow.

Chief executive Martin Morgan told investors: “Clearly the trading environment does remain somewhat challenging, particularly for our consumer businesses, but these results do illustrate the progress DMGT is making.”

DMGT said the market shares of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday (MoS) were higher in March than a year earlier, and that the launch of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun on Sunday, to fill the vacuum following the News of the World’s demise, had seen little impact on the mid-market MoS.

The group, which also prints a string of regional titles, said interim pre-tax profit fell 14 per cent to £105 million on revenue down 2 per cent at £973 million.

DMGT said a cover price rise boosted circulation revenues while strength in digital ads and the business publishing division (B2B) partly offset falling print advertising revenues.

“The continued growth of our B2B companies and more positive momentum expected within our consumer operations in the second half of the year means that we expect to achieve growth in earnings for the full financial year,” Morgan said.