SMG’s publishing division made a valuable contribution to the group last year, with a turnover of £77.5m, according to its latest preliminary results.

And operating profit for the division was up by five per cent to £15m, with the help of reduced headcount, newsprint and marketing costs.

Newspaper revenues fell by one per cent, but this was balanced by an eight per cent increase in magazines revenues.

At the end of last year the group announced the sale of its publishing arm – which includes The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times – and it hopes this will be completed by Easter after clearance from the DTI.

It says that the sale, at a price of £216m, will broadly halve the group’s debt.

Chairman Don Cruickshank said: “While an excellent business, we had concluded that in the process of strengthening our balance sheet we wanted to focus more sharply on national advertising markets, which represent some 90 per cent of our non-publishing revenues.

“Furthermore, with an apparent increase in regulatory attention on local media ownership in the Communications Bill and the growing consolidation of the regional newspaper market, we decided our publishing business was no longer core to our future.”

The results were revealed in the SMG’s report for the year ending December 31, 2002, which also showed that as a whole the group’s total turnover was £278.4m, with a total operating profit of £55.5m, excluding exceptional items.

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