Good morning, it's Paul here with the SCVR for Friday.

Timing - today's report is now finished.

Agenda -

Reach (LON:RCH) - Trading Update

Tremor International (LON:TRMR) - Trading statement

Dp Poland (LON:DPP) - Reverse takeover & share dealings re-commence

Scs (LON:SCS) - Very significant major shareholder announced!

J Sainsbury (LON:SBRY) - trading update

Character (LON:CCT) - Freehold property disposal

Pets At Home (LON:PETS) - Good trading update

Marston's (LON:MARS) - Q1 update

.


Reach (LON:RCH)

Share price: 224p (up 28% at 08:45)
No. shares: 312.1m
Market cap: £699m

Trading Update

Reach plc, formerly Trinity Mirror plc, is a national and regional news publisher. The Company is engaged in producing and distributing content through newspapers and associated digital platforms.
[Source: StockReport synopsis]

Good news this morning with a positive update for FY 12/2020 -

Reach plc ("Reach", the Company") today announces that it expects underlying operating profit for 2020 to be ahead of market expectations, in the range of £130 to £135 million, following a record digital revenue performance.

This new £130-135m range is ahead of existing consensus expectations for u/l operating profit of £124.3m . So about 5-9% increase above expectations, coming right at the year end, is very good.

Digital revenue grew by 24.9% in Q4, up from 13.4% in Q3. Print circulation sales were down 11.7% in Q4, an improvement on the 12.6% decline in Q3. These trends contributed to an improved total revenue decline in Q4 of 10.2%, compared with the 14.8% decline in Q3.

That's a good acceleration in digital revenues in Q4, which were +16.2% for the 5 months to 22 Nov 2020, which I covered here on the 27 Nov 2020 trading update.

Although overall revenues are still falling fast, reinforcing the fact that the main business (newspapers) looks moribund long-term. There's been a surge of investor interest in the digital side of the business in the last year, as you can see from the share price.

Digital strategy - is to persuade customers to sign up (now at an impressive 5m customer registrations), which enables Reach to track user activity on its website, and thereby better target advertising.

Pension deficit - is…

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