THE chief executive of Johnston Press, which publishes The Scotsman and Yorkshire Post newspapers, said the company remains profitable in spite of the recent fall in advertising revenues.
Ashley Highfield also claimed the recent refinancing of the company had been a significant achievement in directors' efforts to put the company on a stable footing for the future.
Addressing investors at the company's general meeting, Mr Highfield said while advertising income has been under pressure in the downturn, Johnston Press has been able to maintain or increase revenues earned from other areas.
Mr Highfield said circulation, digital, contract printing revenues were stable or increased last year.
"We should not forget the underlying business is still profitable and, apart from the advertising, pretty robust, with robust margins," he told the meeting.
Mr Highfield said the refinancing agreed in April was very successful and an important part of the progress the company had achieved in recent months.
Johnston Press was given a new £393 million three-year loan facility. The company will pay a charge equal to 13% of the sum borrowed including fees.
However, the company will be able to reduce the cost to 10% if it is able to replace the facility with funds from another source in 2014. Mr Highfield said Johnston Press has a clear plan to pay down debt so it will be able to arrange new funding at a lower cost.
A former BBC and Microsoft executive, Mr Highfield highlighted the company's plans to grow digital revenues, partly through developing new applications like apps for mobile devices.
However, he said print products will remain key.
Johnston Press recorded underlying earnings of £28m in 2011, after paying £38.5m interest.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article