Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) experienced a weakness in print advertising in the final three months of 2011, but said overall trading was in line with its expectations.
Underlying revenue during the quarter -the first of the company's fiscal year - rose 2% to £495m, boosted by a continued strengthening in its digital offerings.
The publisher and exhibitions organiser also saw its revenues from the group's business-to-business (B2B) operations in the quarter rise 3% to £224m.
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In its Consumer Media division things were more mixed, with total underlying advertising revenues down 2%, total advertising revenues from Associated Newspapers' newspaper related operations down 4%, and print down by 7%, while digital soared 61%.
MailOnline continued to grow strongly with over 99m unique browsers in January 2012 according to web analytics firm Omniture, 77% higher than January 2011, and 15m higher than the previous month. DMGT noted that in December the site became the most popular newspaper owned web site in the world. MailOnline's revenues for the quarter were 70% higher than last year.
However, it was falling revenues in both retail (down 8%) and travel (down 12%) that were the drivers of the overall 4% year-on-year decline in advertising revenue in the Consumer Media division.
Martin Morgan, Chief Executive, said: "Overall our B2B operations achieved good underlying revenue growth, whilst our consumer media operations were resilient with increased national circulation revenues which, together with a strong digital performance, offset a decline in print advertising revenues."
While acknowledging the continuing external uncertainties, particularly for UK advertising, Morgan said the group's outlook for the year remains unchanged. that's despite total advertising revenue at Associated Newspapers falling 9% year-on-year in January, while DMGT's underlying advertising revenues were down 10% on January 2010.
Net debt at 2nd January, 2012 rose from £719m at 2nd October, 2011 to £820m due to the agreed payment of £37m into the group's main pension scheme in October 2011, acquisitions of £20m and the usual seasonal cash outflows.
The share price fell 2.75% to 449.7p by 08:38.
NR
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