The seven newspapers closed by Trinity Mirror last November brought in £4.5m of revenues last year, the company’s latest trading update has revealed.
The publisher has released a statement ahead of its Annual General Meeting today, which showed the revenues brought in by the seven closed titles in its Southern division, including the Reading Post, although a profitability figure was not included.
Trinity Mirror announced last November that it was closing the printed newspapers, which also included GetReading, the Wokingham and Bracknell Times, the Surrey Herald, Surrey Times, Woking Informer and Harrow Observer, so it could focus on a digital-first approach.
The report shows that overall revenues at Trinity Mirror fell by 10pc year-on-year in the first four months of 2015, with underlying revenue down 8pc year-on-year. The underlying figure excludes revenues generated by the seven newspapers that were closed.
Underlying publishing revenues fell by 8pc, with print revenues falling by 10pc and digital growing by 29pc.
According to the statement, the publisher also had “strong cash flows” and had a net cash position of £20m at the end of last month, compared to a net debt of £19m at the end of 2014.
The £39m cash inflow during the period included dividends from its investment in Local World, which produced a special one-off dividend of £12m for Trinity Mirror.
There was also a cash inflow of £4m from its investment in Press Assocation.
The trading update also highlights digital growth, with average monthly unique users and page views growing by 55pc and 51pc respectively for the January to April period, compared to the same four months last year.
It added that print advertising markets remained “challenging”, with underlying print advertising revenue falling by 14pc, driven by similar trends to those experienced at the end of 2014.
The statement said: “The Board continues to expect performance for the year to be in line with expectations.
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“Digital revenues grew by 29pc…” From what to what, pray may I ask? £100 to £129? And what’s the profit margin? In the 16-7 years I have been around digital (I was a magazine editor when the first pointy-heads came calling with their fairy tales) no-one has ever given me a clear account of online finances. They’re either lumped in with other elements or simply not publicly announced identified. I wonder why that’s the case… though I think we all know the answer.
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What an extremely curious decision.
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Without profitability information, it’s difficult to take anything from this news, other than it appears increasingly likely that Trinity Mirror now own the word ‘challenging’.
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Dick Minim hits the nail right on the head. I too have never heard any understandable, plain English facts about the profits (or lack of them) from on line.
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Lord help the Nation should Labour win the election and act like the board of its loyalist supporter, Trinity Mirror!
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Not to be confused with this, the original contributor of this name……lol
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