DMGT: Mail Online records 74 per cent rise in revenue

The website for the Daily Mail, Mail Online, has recorded a 74 per cent increase in revenues year-on-year, according to preliminary results for 2012.

Owners the Daily Mail and General Trust released unaudited preliminary results for the year ending 30 September today, which found a group decrease in revenue of 1 per cent, falling from £1,985 million to £1,960 million.

The group did however report a 10 per cent rise in pre-tax profit and a 7 per cent rise in operating profit.

And while overall revenues within Associated Newspapers were down 2 per cent, digital revenues from the newspaper websites rose by 72 per cent.

Mail Online revenues grew to £28 million in the same year in which it reached a new record of more than 100 million unique browsers in a month, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation results.

Across Associated Newspapers, which includes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro newspapers, overall revenues were down 2 per cent, with a 6 per cent drop in print advertising revenues alone. 

Circulation revenues were found to have risen three per cent to £353 million, with the company citing cover price increases in 2011 and the "temporary price discounting by The Mail on Sunday last year following the closure of the The News of the World" as contributing factors.

For the Daily Mail alone, circulation revenues rose 4.4 per cent, whilst the Mail on Sunday fell 0.8 per cent.

The group adds in the report that the coming year will see "increased investment in expanding the New York and Los Angeles editorial bureaus", of the Daily Mail, "as well as the teams of UK and US video editors, which will be accompanied by significant investment in technology".

Within regional publishing arm Northcliffe Media, which DMGT yesterday confirmed was to be sold to new local media business Local World, profits were reportedly up 54 per cent, while underlying revenues fell 6 per cent.

Looking ahead and the DMGT reports that "underlying advertising revenues in the first seven weeks of the new financial year were down five per cent on last year, with continued limited visibility of future trends".

It adds that within its Associated Newspapers business, which includes titles such as the Daily Mail and Metro, it "expects to maintain stable underlying revenues, underpinned by continued strong growth in the digital businesses, albeit with a low single digit percentage decline on a reported basis".

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