Gannett quarterly profits fall 60%

Gannett Co. reported its first-quarter results Thursday. The number that received the most attention involved the company's profits, which fell 60 percent from the first quarter last year, according to the Associated Press via Yahoo! Finance.

Gannett, which publishes USA Today and dozens of other daily newspapers, earned $77.4 million, or 34 cents per share, in the first three months of the year. In the same quarter in 2008, McLean, Va.-based Gannett earned $192 million, 84 cents per share.

However, the news wasn't all grim:

Adjusting for one-time losses and gains, earnings came to 25 cents per share. On that basis, analysts had expected 24 cents, according to Thomson Reuters.
That was enough to push Gannett shares up 27 cents, or 7.7 percent, to $3.76 in morning trading.

Much of the falling profits were the result of the company's ad revenue, which fell 34 percent from the previous quarter and has now fallen for nine straight quarters.

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