NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gannett Co Inc , the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, posted lower quarterly profit on Friday, because of poorer print advertising sales falling short of Wall Street's expectations.
Gannett, which publishes USA Today, the largest newspaper by circulation, said third-quarter net income fell 32.5 percent to $158.1 million, or 69 cents a share, from $234 million, or $1.01 a share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Excluding charges for job cuts of $14.4 million after tax, or 7 cents a share, Gannett reported earnings of 76 cents a share, a penny short of the average analyst forecast, according to Reuters Estimates.
Revenue fell 9 percent to $1.6 billion, driven by an 18 percent drop in publishing division ad revenue.
The results cap more than a week of stomach-churning ad declines at U.S. publishers Media General Inc
Shares of Gannett, one of the most stable of a group of increasingly ailing newspaper publishers, have lost more than three quarters of their value in the past 12 months. Despite that slide, analysts and investors have cheered the company's stringent cost-cutting measures.
That has not always resonated well with employees, a thousand of whom earlier this summer were marked for dismissal as part of those efforts to trim expenses.
(Reporting by Robert MacMillan, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
