The Guardian Media Group's regional newspaper businesses will have much smaller margins in the future, which means the company must have different expectations for them, GMG's chief executive told the Financial Times.

“They are good businesses, with potentially good profits, but the margins are going to come down,” Carolyn McCall said, the FT reported Wednesday.

McCall told the FT her expectations of GMG's local newspapers, including the Manchester Evening News, have changed, but that does not mean the media group plans to sell them.

“We have owned the MEN for a long, long time and it's turned over enormous amounts of cash,” she said, according to the FT. “It's not costing us money. It's costing us profit and that's bad, but it's not that bad.”

GMG will release today full-year results ending in March 2008, expected to show an 8.7 percent rise in turnover, to £438 million. Operating profit for GMG Regional Media, meanwhile, fell from £19.4 million to £14.3 million, on revenues of £120.5 million, down from previous revenues of £122.2 million. Contributing to the decline was a slump in classified advertising revenue, which dropped 8 percent, the FT reported.