Daily Mail and General Trust (LSE: DMGT) issued an interim management statement this morning for the first quarter of its financial year — the three months to 31 December 2013 — and its share price is currently up 4.4% on the day.
Whilst reported revenue for Q1 fell by 6%, to £472m, the company said there had been underlying growth of 6% over the same quarter last year. It also reported “strong underlying growth” of 10% in its business-to-business operations — 14% underlying growth in dmg information and 32% underlying growth at dmg events helped offset 7% at Risk Management Solutions and a flat performance by Euromoney Institutional Investor.
Its consumer-facing newspaper business — dmg media — saw only 2% underlying revenue growth over the same quarter last year, and underlying circulation revenues were down 2%. The decline in volume was at least partially offset by a cover price increase in February 2013, and the company reports that its newspapers continue to gain market share.
Advertising revenue for the first quarter at the group’s digital platform — MailOnline — grew by 48%, jumping to £14m from £9m in the previous Q1. The gain more than compensated for the £1m fall in print-based advertising revenue in the same period. Taken over both digital and print, underlying advertising revenues rose by 5%. The company also reported that unique visitors to its MailOnline site in December increased by 41% on same month in the previous year, rising to 162 million, with the average daily unique visitors figure growing by 39% over last year, to 9.9 million.
Curently at 1,011p, Daily Mail and General Trust’s share price has soared 67% over the past year, utterly eclipsing the FTSE 100’s paltry 3% over the same period. And over five years, it’s bettered the FTSE 100 by a factor of five, growing 284% compared to the index’s 56%.
