Trinity Mirror’s trading update:
We continue to make good progress against our strategic initiatives whilst supporting profits and delivering strong cash flows. The Board is confident that performance for the year will be marginally ahead of expectations, with net debt falling to around £35 million by the year end, significantly better than expectations.
Group revenue on a like for like basis is expected to fall by below 8% in the fourth quarter compared to a decline of 9% in the third quarter and a decline of 8% in the first half. Publishing revenue is expected to fall by 8% in the final quarter with print declining by 10% and digital growing by 8%. Print advertising and circulation revenue is expected to fall by 17% and 5% respectively. Classified digital revenues, which are substantially jointly sold with print, continue to remain under pressure but we are expecting to deliver strong growth in digital display and transactional revenue of 18%.
The Group has acquired 2.5 million shares for £2.3 million under the £10 million share repurchase programme announced in August.
The Group has disposed of its office building in Cardiff, which is only partially occupied by our business, Media Wales, for net proceeds of £7.8 million.
We have made good progress on settling civil claims arising from phone hacking with damages for over 80% of claims now settled. However, to maintain momentum in bringing the process to a conclusion it is clear that costs, in particular the claimants' legal costs, will be higher and this has caused us to increase the provision for dealing with these historic matters by £11.5 million. Including this increase the provision remaining at the end of this year is expected to be around £22 million. Although there still remains uncertainty as to how these matters will progress the Board remains confident that the exposures arising from these historic events are manageable and do not undermine the delivery of the Group's strategy.
