International freesheet publisher Metro International said it doesn’t expect to break even in 2008, as it announced 69 percent bigger quarterly losses of €1.67 million (£1.29 million) from its online operations for Q3.

So strong in print, Metro International seems unable to find a coherent online money-making proposition and so far this year has lost a total €3.97 million (£3.08 million) from its seven websites in Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Chile, France and Spain. We now can’t rule out site closures: Metro says it’s “actively engaged in a strategic review of its websites to ensure that the product continues to deliver growth”.

Overall, the Swedish company, which publishes in 150 cities around the world, saw operational losses slimmed slightly to €13.43 million (£10.41 million) - but the sale of a third of its native Swedish edition to Schibsted actually gave it a one-time shot in the arm that otherwise helped operating profit to €24 million (£18.64 million).

—Gloomy economy: The company CEO and president Per Mikael Jensen blamed the underlying performance on a mixture of economic downturn, time of year (some papers didn’t publish during the summer holidays), cost of paper and premises costs. And he warned it can only get worse: “Conditions for advertising in Europe and North America are gloomy, regardless of the category, and the visibility is short. Considering the current uncertainty in the global economy which impacts the outlook for the advertising markets in the fourth quarter, we do not believe that Metro International will be able to break even for 2008.”

—Online losses: Metro’s online papers are seeing more traffic, the publisher just needs to make money at the same pace. It says a new online ad platform means it’s “now in a better position to exploit the sales opportunities for online at a lower cost”. The loss was mainly attributed to investments in French and Spanish websites; development team costs too grew 57 percent to €879,000 (£678,000).

—Web traffic: The company said online traffic reached an all-time high in Q3 in countries like Sweden, where its website there received 300,000 unique monthly users. The new Spanish website launched at the end of Q208 trebled users from 166,000 in June to 504, 000 in September.

Financials | Webcast and slides | Release

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