—Full-year earnings: CEO Per Mikael Jensen had the unwelcome job of telling investors revenue dropped 11 percent year-on-year to €295.5 million (£262.6 million), compared to €331.1 million in 2007, but made a net profit of €4.1 million (£3.6 million), compared to a €20.1 million (£17.8 million) net loss in 2007. But if you strip away Metro’s big money divestments like selling 35 percent of its Swedish operations to the Schibsted group, the company made an operating loss of €20 million (£17.7 million).

—Q408 results: Its readership is growing, but Metro’s profits are not. Sales declined 14 percent year on year to €83.5 million (£74.2 million) in the four months to December 31 and the group made an operating loss of €1.9 million (£1.68 million) compared to an operating profit of €3.4 million (£3 million) in Q407—and a net loss of €9.8 million (£8.7 million). Most of the losses come from “restructuring costs”, rising from shutting the company’s Spanish operations and moving its headquarters from London to Stockholm. Jensen says there might be some more costs related to those developments in H109.

—Rights issue: Hovering over Metro, just like almost every major newspaper company, is the spectre of debt. The company admits it “does not have sufficient working capital for the next 12 months” and is proposing a SEK 550 million (£45.81 million) rights issue to shareholders at at EGM on February 24, designed to re-pay its bank facility of €28.7 million fully by April this year.