Trinity Mirror has today unveiled its annual results for 2008 showing a £40m fall in profits at its regional newspapers division.

But the division still turned in an overall profit of £56.3m last year despite the economic downturn.

Today’s results showed print revenues at Trinity Mirror regionals were down from £414.3m in 2007 to £358m last year – a drop of £56.3m.

But regional digital revenues were up from £30.4m to £38m, contributing to digital profits across the group as a whole of £7.6m.

The regional figures were part of an overall group-wide drop in profits from £186.1m in 2007 to £145.2m last year.

Overall group revenues fell by almost £100m from £971.3m to £871.7m.

The main contributor to the drop in revenues in the regional division was advertising revenue which was down from £326.7m in 2007 to £282.3m.

By contrast circulation revenue fell by just £3.4m, from £80.5m to £77.1m.

Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey said today: “Trinity Mirror has performed creditably in very difficult trading conditions.

“While advertising revenues were under extreme pressure we delivered full-year results ahead of market forecasts.

“In spite of the downturn, I am a firm believer that careful management of our portfolio of strong print and online brands will enable us to navigate our way through the challenging market conditions as we make the transition to a new lower-cost multi-platform business model.

“With our proven track record of delivering substantial cost savings and driving efficiencies in our businesses, we remain well positioned to manage our way through these uncertain times for the UK economy.”

Today’s report highlights the introduction of new operating models at Trinity’s major regional centres in the West Midlands, Merseyside, North-East and South Wales and the move to new state-of-the-art premises in Birmingham and Cardiff.

It reveals that the company made a profit of £4m from the disposal of land at Cardiff following the move to new premises by Media Wales.

Comments

Observer (26/02/2009 10:31:47)
Shouldn’t the headline be the company MADE a profit of £358m last year. I mean, we are all trying to be positive, aren’t we?

cadmus (26/02/2009 11:21:47)
Well they have to justify all those redundancies and newspaper closures somehow you know.
I’m sure all those out of work will now understand why, seeing that print revenues are only £358m

Mick Tems (03/03/2009 16:58:07)
Sly by name, sly by nature. A good profits boost for Trinity Mirror would be the sacking of all greedy, selfish executives and their utterly obscene salaries.