JOHNSTON Press reported a 14 per cent fall in revenues for the year to date but said it expected its 2016 results to fall in line with expectations.

“The sector has continued to experience challenging trading conditions and volatility in the advertising market in the first quarter, which began to show signs of improvement in April,” said the Edinburgh-based company, which is led by chief executive Ashley Highfield.

“Johnston Press remains focused on increasing audiences, providing creative solutions for our advertisers, further cost reduction and integration and growth within the i.”

Stripping out any contribution from the 'i' newspaper that it bought this year from Russian media owner Evgeny Lebedev, Johnston Press said group revenue fell by 13.7 per cent in the 17 weeks from 3 January to 30 April.

This reflected a 14.4 per cent decline in first quarter revenues and an improved rate of decline of 11.5 per cent in April.

“Advertising revenues for the period were down 16.9 per cent, following a 17.9 per cent decline in Q1 against strong year-on-year comparatives but with an improved rate of decline of 13.2 per cent in April,” Johnston Press said.

Digital revenues fell 5.7 per cent in the first quarter but rose 4.5 per cent in April. This reflected strong growth from Google’s AdWords advertising service and 1XL, the online platform that gives advertisers access to more than 800 sites owned by different news groups.

Johnston Press completed the acquisition of the ‘i’ newspaper on 10 April. It said daily print sales peaked at 297,849 during April, up 7 per cent on the daily peak reported for March. The newspaper has since been launched into Northern Ireland, while the online version, inews.co.uk launched on 14 April, reached 638,000 unique users in the first month and attracted 1.8m page views.

The company noted the BBC’s recent £8m commitment to regional press to fund initially 150 journalists to cover council reporting. “The BBC has also agreed to an independent audit of content on their sites to improve attribution and linking to regional publications,” Johnston Press added, noting that it represents around 18.6 per cent of the regional and local press industry.