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DMGT profit dips on Net
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December 14, 2000: 6:45 a.m. ET
Internet and newspaper expansion hurts profit at Daily Mail & General Trust
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Daily Mail & General Trust PLC's expansion into the Internet arena and the roll-out of free newspaper Metro caused full-year profit to fall 27 percent.
The U.K. publishing company behind national newspaper the Daily Mail and London's Evening Standard said Thursday its net income for the year ended Oct. 1 slipped to £110.4 million ($161 million), or 27.6 pence a share, from £151.1 million, or 37.7 pence, a year ago. Sales rose 15 percent to £1.86 billion.
DMGT spent £69 million to expand Metro beyond its initial base in London and on various Internet publishing ventures, such as thisismoney.com, thisislondon.com, CharlotteStreet.com and national classified advertising site Fish4.com.
 The London-based media holding company said revenue from its this is ... sites doubled to £5 million and traffic rose to 10 million page impressions a month, up from 3 million last year.
Operating profit at Associated Newspapers, its main business, fell 15 percent to 73.3 million. Average circulation of the Daily Mail increased 1.1 percent
to 2.38 million over the year, but The Mail on Sunday average eased 0.1 percent to 2.296 million. The Evening Standard achieved an average circulation of 441,000, 1.6 percent down on last year.
Advertising remained strong in all three titles with an increase of 12 percent on last year.
The company raised the annual dividend 10 percent to 8 pence a share.
Daily Mail stock, tightly held with the founding Rothermere family controlling the group, fell 10 pence, or 0.5 percent, to 2,045 pence in London Thursday morning. The stock has underperformed the British media sector by 20 percent in 2000.
The company entrenched its radio network in Australia by bidding A$70 million ($37.9 million) to win a commercial FM radio license in Melbourne, the nation's second-largest city. The acquisition comes seven months after its A$155 million bid for an FM radio license in Sydney, Australia's biggest city, topped all rival offers at a government auction.
--from staff and wire reports 
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