United Business Media has today reported a strong set of results for 2008, describing trading in the three months to the end of January as "satisfactory and resilient".

The company said it had slashed costs by cutting 500 jobs in the second half of last year and a total of 1,000 since June 2007.

UBM, which owns a range of trade magazines, events and news distribution service PR Newswire, reported a 4.5% rise in adjusted operating profit in 2008 to £173.5m, up from £166m a year earlier, leading the company to boost its dividend by 10% to 23.8p.

Revenue increased by 10.7% year on year to £887m in 2008. However, pre-tax profit fell from £129.5m in 2007 to £101.3m last year.

Last year UBM's trade magazine division, which includes Music Week, Property Week and Farmers Guardian, saw an 8.4% fall in underlying revenue to £215.6m and an 11.1% fall in adjusted operating profits to £23.9m. UBM said it expects its business-to-business magazine division will account for just 10% of profits this year.

The magazine division contributed 24.3% of the company's total revenues last year – down from 56.2% in 2004 when the company embarked on a strategy to reduce its exposure to the struggling print sector – and 13.8% of its profits.

UBM added that the events, data, services and online operations account for 60% of operating profit with the distribution, monitoring and targeting division accounting for 25%.

"We expect that the current economic conditions will serve to accelerate these trends such that current economic conditions will serve to accelerate these trends such that the proportion of UBM's profits generated by print magazine products will fall... to less than 10% by the end of 2009," the company said.

The company said its operating margin of 19.6%, although slightly down on 2007, was a strong performance in the market conditions.

"While UBM is not immune to the effects of the slowdown taking place across markets and economies worldwide, we are confident that we are as well placed as we can be to continue to deliver value to shareholders," said David Levin, chief executive of UBM.

"We have also taken early action to reduce costs and have maintained a prudent balance sheet, allowing us to make selected acquisitions as pricing improves and opportunities arise."

UBM said it spent £38.4m on acquisitions in 2008, less than 25% of the level in 2006. The company said that the tough economic conditions would mean "more opportunities" for further acquisitions would emerge this year.

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