DMGT: Not sure when regional division will recover

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on July 30, 2010 at 11:54 AM

Daily Mail and General Trust previously announced it expected the 100 newspapers in its regional arm, Northcliffe Media, to return to growth at the end of this year. But now the UK publisher says the announcement was a bit premature, and it currently is unable to tell when the regional titles will recover from recent economic hardships, MediaGuardian reported today.

"We don't know yet, I have no idea as we don't have that visibility," Peter Williams, DMGT's finance director, told MediaGuardian. "It is a bit disappointing - certainly around Christmas, if trends had continued, we should have moved into revenue growth by the spring or summer. It has remained stubbornly slightly negative."

However, on Wednesday the Financial Times reported that DMGT did managed to beat expectations for the third quarter, thanks to growth in business operations and an improving national advertising landscape. Williams told the FT that retail has been the strongest sector. However, regionals saw advertising and circulation revenues down 4 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

DMGT's net debt is currently down to £970 million, the Scotsman reported.

"Trading in the third quarter has continued to reflect the generally positive trends in our international B2B and UK consumer media businesses, although we remain wary about the medium term outlook, particularly in the UK," CEO Martin Morgan told the Scotsman.