Trinity Mirror advertising slumps
NATIONAL and local newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror warned that advertising revenues have fallen dramatically since 11 September and December is showing no sign of improvement.
Advertising in the group's three national titles, The Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, had been rising before the attacks on the US. Then it almost came to a complete stop at the request of the advertisers themselves. In October advertising revenue fell by 10.1% and in November this doubled to 20.7%. Trinity said: 'The current outlook for December is similar to November.'
Analysts said that display advertising had not enjoyed its normal pre-Christmas pick-up partly because retailers felt consumer spending had continued to boom without the normal booster. They added that the Mirror and People titles were likely to have been hit less hard by the collapse in financial services, travel and executive recruitment advertising.
Trinity, led by chief executive Philip Graf, said that its Scottish national titles, including the Daily Record, had been hit slightly less hard, October ad revenues down by 13% and November's by 17.3%. Regional newspapers were less badly affected, with a distinct bias towards the South- East, boosted by strong recruitment advertising - up 8.5% in the third quarter.
Trinity said that since September papers in the Thames Valley, Heathrow and Gatwick areas had suffered a significant decline in revenues.
Total regional advertising revenues rose by 2% in the third quarter but fell by 2.3% and 2.9% in October and November respectively. Trinity's interest in three free Metro titles are excluded from these figures.
Trinity said: 'The outlook for December (which, in normal trading, is a difficult month to predict) indicates a continuation of the deterioration.'
The group expects newsprint, which accounts for a fifth of its costs, to be cheaper next year and is negotiating price cuts with suppliers. It said national newspaper circulations had risen in September and October but that over the six months to November The Mirror's annual circulation fell by 2.4% compared with 3.1% a year earlier.
Its shares, which had been among the best performing media stocks so far this year, tumbled 14p to 408 1/2p, valuing the group at just under £1.2bn.
