Daily Mail swings back into black

London: A rebound in national advertising and tighter cost controls have helped Daily Mail & General Trust swing back into the black for the full-year in spite of a fall in revenues.

The publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers said that job cuts, the disposal of unprofitable operations and growth at its business-to-business division — which reported a 12 per cent rise in profit — were behind the improvement.

Martin Morgan, DMGT chief executive, praised the Daily Mail's "outstanding editorial content" and said the group had instigated a change in promotional tactics away from attracting readers with the promise of free DVDs and CDs.

"We continue to run the paper pretty tightly from a cost perspective. Profits continue to be pretty good," he said.

"We've had a good year in the circulation side, particularly over the past few months. It seems the switch in our promotional approach to one where instead of heavy reliance on CDs and DVDs in the paper, towards one on drawing potential readers' attention to what's in the newspaper [has been successful]."

But DMGT's Northcliffe regional news unit struggled due to higher newsprint costs and a decline in advertising. "Revenues are running down 6 or 7 per cent at the moment. Property advertising has picked up and is increasing year on year, but recruitment is still quite sharply down," said Martin.

He added that government austerity measures had not greatly affected Northcliffe, and said: "We didn't have much on the public sector side in Northcliffe, but what we did have, most of that has gone away."

Confidence

Bookings and attendance at DMGT's events business had been "moderately encouraging", and the group expressed confidence for 2011 as two of its three biggest biennial shows were scheduled the financial year — the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference this month and Gastech, an event for the global gas industry, in March 2011.

Martin said DMGT was not in the market for acquisitions, and would focus on organic growth.

"I think the British economy needs to recover," he said.

"Recruitment advertising needs to come back. There needs to be better prospects before investors are going to want to take the risk of putting more capital in.