“This last year has been an advertising crisis, not a newspaper crisis,” said Montgomery, the chief executive of Mecom. “We cannot continue to rely solely on sales of – and advertising in – the printed product, although these will of course remain the mainstay of our profitability for many years to come.”

The company today unveiled a three-year series of operational and financial targets to “focus our attentions on the overwhelming requirement to develop new revenues and [earnings] for areas other than traditional print publishing, in which future advertising growth cannot be easily predicted”.

Targets include growing new revenues, including paid-for content and online advertising, by €100m over three years. This is a 35% annual increase on the current base of €67m. Mecom aims to grow its unique user base from 32m to 58m by the end of 2012, growth of 20% a year. Overall digital revenues fell 11% year-on-year from €75.5m to €67m.

Mecom, which was burdened by debt of €682m in December 2008, had managed to cut this to €373m at the end of last year, a multiple of 3.1 times earnings, before, interest tax, depreciation and amortisation. By 2012 the company wants to reduce this to less than twice EBITDA.

Operating costs fell by €140m, exceeding the original target of €75m. Mecom said that it has managed to mitigate more than 75% of “lost revenue” from the downturn by slashing costs.

“We do not know when European print advertising markets will recover – but as they do, we will benefit from growth in our traditional advertising,” said Montgomery. “We expect continuing but more modest declines, as demonstrated by the 8% decline in February 2010 year to date advertising, in print advertising to be compensated for by increases in our online activities.”