Daily Mail and General Trust, the publisher of the Daily Mail, has shrugged off early signs of a slowdown in the advertising world to increase revenues in the first quarter by 2 per cent.
Total revenues at Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and Metro papers, rose by 2 per cent to £250 million in the thirteen weeks to 30 December.
The company, a newspaper publisher to events and conference business, said that most parts of its business were performing well despite the troubles in the financial and property markets.
“We believe that our strategy of creating a diversified portfolio of market-leading operations across both business and consumer products leaves us well positioned to delivery long-term growth,” Viscount Rothermere, the chairman of DMGT, said.
Advertising revenues at Associated Newspapers rose by 4 per cent in the quarter, despite continued weakness at Teletext. Print advertising revenues remained strong, overall, although a 9 per cent decline in classified advertising was offset by growth in display adverts.
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Retail was the largest display category and posted 8 per cent growth. “Retail we generally find in difficult times has been pretty resilient as an advertising category because retailers have to keep moving goods off the shelves,” Peter Williams, the finance director of DMGT, said.
Retail accounts for about 30 per cent of the display advertising on the Daily Mail, Mr Williams said. He added that property advertising had been softening recently although recruitment was “holding up very well”.
“The trends in the underlying economy remain pretty good. There are more people in jobs in this country than ever before ... that doesn’t feel like a market place that is imploding,” Mr Williams said.
The circulations of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday were flat in the six month period to December 2007, however both papers increased their share of the newspaper market. The group said that the response to the relaunch, in January, of The Mail on Sunday had been encouraging.
Analysts have been concerned about the exposure of UK newspaper publishers to weakness in retail advertising, particularly after Marks & Spencer, one of the biggest retailers in Britain, posted its worst quarterly performance in two years last month.
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Within Northcliffe Media, the regional newspaper arm, revenues were flat despite a 90 per cent increase in UK digital revenues. While retail and recruitment ads revenue increased on last year, there was a marked decline in motor advertising (down 12 per cent), leisure (down 5 per cent) and property also fell, though only by 1 per cent.
UBS analysts said that the figures looked good at first sight, but detected signs of weakness in the soft advertising figures for regional papers.
Outside its traditional newspaper market, DMGT saw strong increases in revenues with DMG Information’s revenues up 18 per cent in the quarter to 31 December to £74 million. Revenues from the company’s other business information companies also climbed strongly, up 52 per cent to £20 million.
Revenues at Euromoney, the financial publisher in which DMGT is a majority shareholder, also held up despite weakness in the financial sector. Revenues at Euromoney grew by 6 per cent in the three months to 31 December.
Shares in DMGT fell slightly to 483 from 488.5p in early trading.