Trinity Mirror has announced a £27.4 million fall in pre-tax profit to £70.8 million for the past six months.
For the six months ending June 29, revenues fell by almost £7 million year on year to £460.8 million
Operating profits fell 21.7% at the company’s regional newspaper division, to £45.5 million, while the national newspaper division’s operating profit fell 6.2% to £42.7 million.
The nationals newspapers’ advertising revenues were down by 6.5%.
Retail advertising in its national newspapers was down 3.5% down over the six months, with motoring, entertainment and fast-moving consumer goods experiencing double-digit declines while computers and telecommunications had double-digit growth.
However, the publisher’s digital revenues rose by 40.2% to £22.3 million.
Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, said: “The numerous actions we took during the period to reduce our costs and improve our efficiency, product portfolio and balance sheet have served to partially off-set the impact of the serious downturn in advertising expenditure being experienced by consumer facing media businesses.
“We have implemented a further efficiency programme which will deliver at least an additional £20m of savings in 2009 by accelerating technological improvements to processes across editorial, advertising and pre-press.
“We believe that these initiatives alongside good portfolio management and our continued investment to build our digital revenues will see the group through this economic downturn and best position the business for growth when market conditions improve.”
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