PARIS (Reuters) - Newspaper group Daily Mail & General Trust <DMGOa.L> said on Thursday advertising conditions had improved in April and May after first-half sales fell 7 percent, and it kept its interim dividend unchanged.
The owner of the national Daily Mail and regional newspapers said adjusted earnings per share fell 49 percent to 14.2 pence but revenue cost-saving measures would now improve profitability by 150 million pounds this year.
Sales for the six months to end-March were 1.085 billion pounds, the company said.
Advertising revenues at regional newspaper division Northcliffe Media, hardest hit by the recession as small advertisers cut budgets, fell 36 percent in April.
The group said in March it was doubling the number of planned job cuts at its local newspapers division to 1,000, about 22 percent of the unit's staff.
Regional newspaper publishers Trinity Mirror <TNI.L> and Johnston Press <JPR.L> both said last week they saw signs of stabilisation in the advertising market after steep declines this year to date.
Daily Mail is protected to an extent from the collapse in newspaper advertising revenues by its business-to-business (B2B) publications at its Euromoney <ERM.L> unit, an international exhibitions business and an Australian radio group.
Together, these non-newspaper operations brought in 61 percent of group sales last year, and the company said it expected to achieve growth overall in the rest of the year at its B2B businesses.
(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Hans Peters)