DMGT dives to £77m but scents an ads recovery

Daily Mail & General Trust has relied on its business-to-business divisions to see it through the recession but claims to have seen an improvement in newspaper advertising in the last couple of months.

Finance director Peter Williams said: "I wouldn't call them green shoots but April and May have been better than the previous three months. However, there is no visibility at all with advertisers booking space at the very last minute."

First-half profits plunged 47% to £77 million in the six months to 29 March on revenues 7% lower at £1.09billion. That was slightly better than analysts had been expecting. The dividend is unchanged at 4.8p a share.

Williams said that the group, which sold the Evening Standard to Alexander Lebedev in February, was on course to make cost savings of £150million in the current year with 1500 jobs going.

Business-to-business revenues were up, partly helped by the strength of the dollar.

Regional newspaper revenues have stabilised and national newspaper cost savings are likely to come through in the second half. Analysts said they did not expect to change their profit forecasts for the full year based on today's numbers.