DMGT ad revenues continue to fall
Daily Mail and General Trust, owner of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Teletext, says that its advertising revenues for consumer titles have fallen 12 % in the past five months.
The company has issued a trading statement that says for the quarter to March advertising revenues from the Associated Newspapers division are expected to fall an underlying 24 %. The regional Northcliffe Media newspapers division is expected to plummet 37 %.
However, the company says that while prospects for the end of March and into April remain uncertain for display ads there are “signs of stabilisation” for classified revenues, save for recruitment. Recruitment revenues are still falling and expected to drop 55 % for the quarter.
The trading update covers the five months to February 2009 and DMGT says that it will exceed targeted revenue and cost initiatives of £100 million. Its B2B operations have seen little change in trends and are described as “resilient.”
But the cost cutting is likely to result in another 500 redundancies on top of the 500 forecast at the time of results in November.
Like rival newspaper publishers, DMGT is struggling with structural change in the market as customers turn to the internet for news while the recession is having a severe impact on advertising revenues
It does say that its advertising yields are still strong and circulation revenues are steady year-on-year, despite some softness partly down to cuts in the marketing budget. DMGT will release half year results to March 29 on May 21.
In February the company sold the Evening Standard to a company headed by Russian Alexander Lebedev.
