Independent News & Media yesterday announced the plunge of 19 per cent advertising revenues this year and "demonstrates a stabilizing trend".

Though, media industry has been beat-up by the nastiest bend in advertising, gratifying the cynic thoughts, INM has seen revenues improve since July. It has reported revenues for the year to
23 October are down 14% year-on-year, an improvement from the first half when they were down almost 15%.

"The improved operating profit performance on the first half resulted from the stabilization in advertising revenue and continued strong cost management across all regions", noted INM.

With the earnest endeavor to boost the balance sheet, INM sold off a series of company assets, including its stake in the online bingo operator Cashcade for €15.2m, a 7 per cent holding in the Indian publisher Jagran Prakashan for €21.7m, and INM Outdoor, its South African advertising arm, for almost €100m. Furthermore, it also plans to sell the price comparison site, Verivox.

INM forecasted annual operating profits between €170m and €190m (£152m-£170m). Nevertheless, the company operating costs were 9 per cent lower than a year ago, compared with the first half when costs were 7.5 per cent down.

Seeing that the group advertising fell 19.6 per cent year-on-year, the company stated, "Based on limited visibility, the advertising trends experienced in September and October remain challenging and are expected to continue for the remainder of 2009".

The group proclaims the agreement with an ad hoc committee of bondholders to streamline the debt of €200m that had been due to mature in May, involving a debt for equity swap of €123m of bonds for a 46 per cent stake in the company and a rights issue, in return for an extension of the bond's maturity and bigger headroom on the debt.

Spotlighting the online environment and paid content models, the contemporary decline has enforced media companies to look towards new business models surrogating the ad revenues in print form.