Proactive Investors - Shares in Reach PLC (LON:RCH) grabbed a 15% gain to 79p after the national and regional news publisher said it was coping with Facebook’s deprioritising of news with “more sustainable digital revenues”.
Group revenue for the Daily Mirror, Express and Star publisher was down 6.1% to £279.4mln for the half-year to 25 June and statutory operating profits 68% to £11.1mln, but full year profits were said to be “on track”.
Print sales were down 2.7%, with circulation revenue up 2% with advertising down 18%, with digital revenue down 16.1%.
But “data-driven revenue” grew to 41% of digital from 35% a year ago and 24% in 2019.
The group, which also publishes the Daily Record, Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Bristol Post and WalesOnline among many others,
In spite of this Facebook (NASDAQ:META)'s algorithm changes driving page-view declines for all publishers, Reach chief executive Jim Mullen said the company was “driving more diversified, higher performing revenues, with greater exposure to directly sold, higher value advertising”.
He said print sales offered “resilience and predictability”, while cash generation was being supported by cost cutting, which was “on plan and expected to support a stronger second half performance”.
The establishment of a US operation was among the new developments, where there is an editorial team of more than 30 working on Express.com, with Mirror.com going live in “coming months”, while other innovations are continuing, including agreements to share data from its Mantis brand safety and contextual advertising platform with Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and trialling metered paywalls.