—Rights issue: New chairman Anthony Habgood says the company doesn’t have a liquidity problem, but does need the money: “Last year’s acquisition of ChoicePoint and the terminated sale of RBI have given us more debt than is prudent in current economic conditions.” The company has paid off $3.8 billion (£2.3 billion) of its debt from the Choicepoint buy, but has another $1 billion (£611 million) to pay by 2011.

—H109 earnings: The company’s H109 revenue rose 26 percent in sterling terms to £3.06 billion—just a three percent rise at constant currency rates—while profits after exceptionals and restructuring charges dropped by 29 percent to £316 million, a 36 percent profit fall at constant currencies.

—RBI losses:  Reed has reportedly hinted it might reverse long-term plans and keep some or all of the company and these figures would surely dampen any M&A interest in it. Still, Reed points out that subscriptions and online data sales—which account for half its revenue—have “held up well” and that revenue was down just two percent.

—One-off charges: If you follow the little asterix on the profit figure in Reed’s release, you find the company lost: £195 million from its acquisitions’ “intangible assets”; £140 million in a goodwill impairment charge, mainly due to losses at RBI in the US; £125 million in restructuring and acquisition costs and £6 million due to tax reclassification of joint ventures. The total comes to £466 million.

—Advertising bad; subscriptions good: It’s a trend we’ve seen across the professional information sector with companies like Informa: subscription-based businesses do far better in the recession. So scientific and educational publisher Elsevier and LexisNexis accounted for 81 percent of Reed’s H1 profits, while RBI and Reed Exhibitions contributed a combined 33 percent drop in profitability. Online subs now account for 80 percent of Elsevier’s main science and technology division. This month Elsevier rolled out a new online format for its scientific articles.

—Cost-savings: Reed says its $510 million (£342.3 million) restructuring plan, designed to save $160 million (£97.8 million) in savings this year, is “on track” and that $250 million (£152.8 million) should be lopped off the company’s cost ledger by 2011.