Thursday, September 21 2006 15:23 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: The company owning The Independent, a leading newspaper which has invested in the Indian newspaper industry, has seen all its worldwide operations increase profits and revenues in the first half of this year.

The company Independent News and Media (INM), has a significant stake in the Dainik Jagran Group, and has recently announced that it will publish The Independent in India after securing the necessary permission from the Indian government.

According to company figures released this week, the results were buoyed by cover price increases at the company's newspapers, leading to a 5.5 percent gain in circulation revenues. Advertising revenues also rose, by 3.8 percent, for the six months to 30 June.

Group operating margin edged up to 18.56 percent, leaving the company on target to hit a 20 percent profit margin this year, a goal set by INM five years ago.

The company said it had benefited from its presence in some of the world's faster-growing economies, including South Africa, where revenues jumped 16.4 percent, driven by a strong advertising market. The company's operations include interests in Australia, New Zealand, India, Britain and Ireland.

Said Anthony O'Reilly, the chief executive: "INM's geographically diversified portfolio of market-leading assets, across diverse multimedia platforms, continues to underpin INM's clear and compelling international growth strategy. This performance and these prospects continue to distinguish the group from its international peers."

Said Ivan Fallon, the chief executive of INM (Britain) and an INM board member: "We held on to these [advertising] gains and even increased revenues, which is a much better result than anything else."

He said losses at the Independent titles should be down by "a couple of million" for 2006, an improvement on the 10 million pounds loss made last year. Fallon said the recently released readership figures were "absolutely fantastic".

He was "sceptical" about the integration of newspaper groups' print and online operations.

"I think it's quite difficult to persuade political or financial journalists to emerge from a chat such as this to file online or do podcasting. I'm an old fashioned print journalist so what would I know about it. I just don't see the economic model for it and I see a lot of potential disruption," he said.