Johnston Press, publisher of The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News, said plans to put digital at the heart of the business would begin delivering results from the end of this year.
Title relaunches, cover price increases and new websites were boosting performance and chief executive Ashley Highfield hailed a period of “tremendous activity” in the first six months.
“We have made significant progress. Johnston Press is going through a strategic transformation,” he said. “We are increasingly confident about the success of the strategy and the benefits that it will deliver.”
The group has relaunched 23 titles as integrated digital and print products and the changes impacted on newspaper sales revenues, which were down 3.1 per cent, while digital revenues rose 8.4 per cent. Digital local display and property revenues have grown period-on-period by 43.8 per cent and 25.2 per cent albeit from a low base. There has been an increase in audiences, particularly to mobile platforms, with monthly visitors up 100 per cent since December.
Johnston introduced iPad apps for seven of its titles and said The Scotsman app was downloaded 20,000 times in the half-year.
The workforce has fallen by another 8.5 per cent to 4,431, with costs slashed by £12.8m. The company blamed the Olympics for a slide in advertising sales by 14.7 per cent in the last six weeks. Total ad revenues fell by 8.2 per cent in the six months to 30 June, while operating profit before non-recurring items fell 8.7 per cent. The underlying pre-tax profit almost halved from £15.7m to £8.1m.
Net debt at the end of June stood at £361.7m which has since fallen to £332.1m, helped by the receipt of £30m from News International.
