Daily Mail & General Trust plc Claims MailOnline Visits Hit 138 Million

Daily Mail & General Trust (LON: DMGT) signals group sales up 2%.

Maynard Paton

Maynard has worked at the Fool since 1999. He ran the Qualiport online portfolio on the Fool from November 1999 to September 2005 and was lead adviser for the Champion Shares & Champion Shares PRO stock-picking services from September 2005 to June 2011, at which point he moved to become Deputy Editor of the UK Fool. Prior to joining the Fool, Maynard worked for a year as a Poll Tax clerk and then for six years at the local authority's IT department in the murky world of ICL mainframes and COBOL programming. He relocated to Kent to join a financial services firm's IT department and there discovered the joys of stock market investing. As well as keeping an eye on share prices and his local housing market, Maynard's interests include karting, martial arts and entertaining his young family.

Published 25 September, 2013 8:38 am BST

The content of this article was relevant at the time of publishing. Circumstances change continuously and caution should therefore be exercised when relying upon any content contained within this article.

The shares of Daily Mail & General Trust (LSE: DMGT) gained 4p to 792p during early trade this morning after the media conglomerate said monthly unique visits to its MailOnline website had rallied 30% to 138 million during August.

Daily Mail, which alongside printing the Daily Mail newspaper stages various industry exhibitions as well as supplying data to the insurance industry, confirmed MailOnline’s progress within a year-end trading update.

The update revealed total sales had climbed 2% on an underlying basis and that annual profits would be in line with City expectations.

The group helpfully stated broker forecasts ranged from £259m to £282m and adjusted earnings ranged from 50.1p to 55p per share, with a consensus of £270m and 52.1p per share respectively.

Daily Mail admitted its newspapers had seen underlying circulation revenues drop 4% and underlying advertising revenues drop 8% during the eleven months to August.

However, advertising sales at MailOnline surged 45% and rallied a combined 21% at other group websites such as Wowcher.

Following this morning’s market reaction to the statement, Daily Mail shares trade at 15.2 times the aforementioned City consensus earnings estimate. They may also yield a potential 2.4% income if a projected 19.3p per share dividend proves to be accurate.