Caxton continues online migration
Media group Caxton has reported a 4.5% lift in turnover to R5.4 billion for the year ended June 2014, as the group continues to stave off declining readership and circulation figures in the newspaper industry.
Caxton, which publishes the daily national newspaper, the Citizen, said that profit from operating activities declined 17.6% to R690 million, while overall profit dipped 13.3% lower to R436 million.
Headline earnings per share declined 19.8% to 98.4 cents, while the board declared a dividend of 60.0 cents (2013: 55.0 cents) per ordinary share.
Caxton noted that the Citizen saw its circulation decrease by 13.4%.
“The good news is that subsequent to the redesign in August 2013, its copy sales stabilised from October onwards. The redesign included all digital platforms, and the latter showed a very healthy growth of almost 500% in unique visitors since January 2014,” it said.
Looking ahead, Caxton said that the challenge will be to translate online readership into
advertising revenue.
It said that with 70 news brands up and running on the various digital platforms, additional sites, and verticals in shopping, cars, property and classifieds will
be rolled out in the year ahead, “as our local newspaper hubs move more decisively from
being print only, to multi-media players”.
The total number of titles falling under Caxton’s community newspaper division are either company owned or major partnerships and total 120 publications.
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