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Fairfax's New Zealand publishing businesses stagnated during the first half of the financial year and the Australian media company has blamed the economy.
However, the company's main local acquisition Trade Me appeared to be making progress.
Fairfax, which owns the Dominion Post, the Sunday Star-Times, the Independent Financial Review and a string of regional dailies, said its New Zealand publishing business was "affected by weak economic conditions" over the six months to December.
Overall advertising revenue was down 2.4 per cent to $213.9 million when employment, motor vehicles, retail, government and corporate and other advertising revenue fell.
Circulation revenue at $68.7 million was up marginally over the period but other revenue fell 11.1 per cent to $8 million giving total revenue of $290.6 million, down 1.7 per cent on the same period a year ago.
Meanwhile costs, which included acquisitions such as the Independent and redundancy payments of $2.8 million, were up 1.8 per cent to $200.3 million.
The company said expenses excluding acquisitions were "well contained despite strong inflationary pressures on labour costs".
Overall operating earnings of $90.3 million for the period were down 8.6 per cent.
But internet auction and advertising business Trade Me, which Fairfax bought last March for $700 million, "continued to grow strongly", the company said.
Trade Me posted operating earnings of $23.3 million. They were on track to reach $45 million for the full year.
As part of Fairfax's deal to acquire the company, it agreed to make a further payment of up to $50 million to Trade Me's owners, including founder Sam Morgan, if it delivered trading profits of more than $45 million in the year after the acquisition.
Analyst Greg Fraser of Shaw Stockbroking in Sydney said it was "a little bit disappointing" the company was only disclosing earnings figures from Trade Me and not revenue.
"They're talking a lot about parameters that would suggest that things are going well but they're still not telling us how much revenue the business is generating," he said.
"They're trying to convince us that all that growth is organic, in other words it's not taking any share from print revenues. Whether you believe that or not is up to you."
Shaw said the information and commentary provided by Fairfax about its New Zealand businesses was fairly patchy and generalised, but the publishing division's softer result was "probably in line with what the economy was doing".
"In terms of advertising itself, things have swung around quite considerably.
"I understand the housing market is still quite strong, but everything else looks like it's tailing off," he said.
Fraser said that during the period, Trade Me's motor vehicle listings were up by 52 per cent to more than 40,000 while publishing car advertising revenue was down 2.6 per cent.
