Operating profits at newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror has risen by 2.5pc over the past year despite a 7pc drop in revenues.

Annual results published today showed the company made £25m of cost savings in 2012 – £10m more than the target set at the styart of the year.

Unveiling his first set of annual results since taking over the role, chief executive Simon Fox admitted the company had not been making the most of its strengths as both a regional and national publisher.

He said content harvested by the group’s regional journalists was not being used in its national titles while the company’s portfolio of titles had not been presented to advertisers in a coordinated fashion.

Today’s results saw operating profits increase from £104.5m in 2011 to £107.1m last year while revenues fell £54.2m to £706.5m – partly attributed to lost circulation revenues following the launch of the Sun on Sunday in February 2012.

The results also reveal the company incurred a loss of £3.7m on its online daily deals business, happli, which was closed in October.

The company reduced its net debt during the year by £64.2m to £157m despite also making a £14.2m investment in David Montgomery’s new regional publishing consortium, Local World.

In keeping with the ‘One Trinity Mirror’ philosophy introduced by Simon after taking over from Sly Bailey, the company is no longer reporting results for its regional newspapers separately from the national titles.

In his statement, Simon said that he believed there was “significant unrealised potential” in the business and highlighted the regional titles as a key strength.

He said:  “Our regional papers are largely situated in major metropolitan cities where significant national news and sport
happens.

“Whether it be the cover-up at Hillsborough, the hunt in Wales for missing 5 year-old April Jones or the shooting of PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in Manchester – our regional journalists are at the scene first and are best placed to provide context and detail to these stories.

“However, their content was often not being used by our national titles so we are introducing closer working between the national and regional titles, with more content being shared across all of Trinity Mirror’s newspapers and digital platforms.

“Equally, content which has little or no directly local relevance (travel features; real life stories; motoring; film and entertainment reviews) was being produced many times across multiple locations.

“We were also not presenting the Trinity Mirror portfolio to our advertisers in a coordinated fashion. Advertising agencies had to connect with multiple sales people within our organisation on behalf of a single client that wanted a national, regional and online campaign.

“In addition, we have not been packaging our reach to advertisers effectively. For example, whilst mirror online has a reach of 4.2 million monthly unique visitors in the UK and ranks 7th on Comscore’s list of news web sites, the combined Trinity Mirror digital brands have a reach of 8.8 million and rank 4th.

“It was evident that a more joined-up approach across our publishing operations would not only be more cost efficient but would also result in higher quality content for our national and regional readers and a better service for advertisers. No other media organisation has the regional and national coverage that we have.

“We have reorganised our editorial and advertising teams with coordinated leadership and reporting structures. This new organisation has been made possible by the significant investment in IT systems that has been implemented in recent years and which will complete in early 2014.

“Our “One Trinity Mirror” structure has multiple revenue and cost benefits and positions us as unique and different to
any of our media competitors.”

• The National Union of Journalists has condemned Trinity Mirror for having exceeded its cost-cutting target by £10m.

Chris Morley, Northern and Midlands organiser, said:  “Trinity Mirror chairman, David Grigson, says today that his journalists are the ‘heartbeat of the business’, yet he is presiding over mass redundancies in his newsrooms.

“If Trinity Mirror has £14m to invest in Local World, a rival company, it should not be asking journalists to pay for this with their jobs.

“Simon Fox says the promised land of being free from the huge debt burden of recent years is close – but disastrous cuts in the core business now could leave the company unable to take advantage of that freedom when the time comes.”