Johnston Press chief executive pledges a return to growth

He said the group, which owns The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, Edinburgh’s Evening News and about 250 other titles, would work on a multi-platform future that would be designed around driving up digital revenues and reinvigorating some of its existing businesses.

“We have to be cleverer and make better use of synergies across the group,” he told The Scotsman.

Accepting that online revenue grew at only 0.7 per cent, he said the figure disguised the fact that the second half had been much stronger.

“The most important thing is the trend. New businesses we have launched such as the online directory Find IT and Dealmonster [a local voucher site] are performing very well.”

He said an editorial development director would be appointed today whose job would be to oversee the roll-out of new products, in particular “vertical contents” which aggregate information.

In his statement to the accounts he said: “I believe we can return Johnston Press to being a growth business through the twin track approach of re-launching and revitalising our papers while simultaneously growing our websites, and taking full advantage of the opportunities created by technology and the changing media demands of our users to deliver innovative propositions.”

The group reported an annual underlying pre-tax profit of £28.4 million, down 6.9 per cent, while underlying operating profit fell 10.3 per cent to £64.6m. Total advertising revenue fell 9 per cent.

Britain’s second-largest regional publisher also wrote down the book value of its newspapers and this accounting charge of £163.7m meant there was a bottom line loss of £143.8m against a profit of £16.5m a year earlier.

Operating costs fell by £24.5m in a year when the company embarked on creating a flatter management structure. Manpower fell by just over 11 per cent. The group has negotiated a £393m loan with its banks until September 2015.