Reach shares slump 19% as AI answers hits Google search traffic

Shares in Reach PLC (LSE:RCH) , the publisher of the Mirror, Express and Daily Star, fell 19% to 47.72p after half-year results showed a 40% collapse in page views driven largely by Google, leaving the company leaning ever harder on cost-cutting to protect profits.

Revenue for the six months to 30 June fell 9% to £232.9 million, with digital revenues down 11.4% to £54.2 million.

The culprit is a structural shift in how Google handles search. Since the rollout of AI Overviews , the artificial intelligence summaries that appear above search results, users increasingly get their answer on the results page and never click through to the publisher that produced the underlying journalism.

Google search referrals to publishers worldwide fell by roughly a third in the year to November, according to Chartbeat data, with referrals from the Google Discover feed down 21%.

That matters acutely for Reach, whose digital model has long depended on high volumes of casual visitors monetised through programmatic advertising, the automated auctions that sell ad space by the impression.

Indirect revenue, the volume-sensitive part of that mix, fell 16.2% in the half and 21.3% in the second quarter.

Print offered no shelter, with revenue down 8.3% to £178 million as circulation volumes dropped 22%.

Chief executive Piers North said the company was building greater independence from referral traffic through subscriptions and video.

Direct revenue, excluding the local business, grew 6%, and the company said on-platform page views stabilised through the second quarter.

The response has been cost reduction, with adjusted operating costs down 10.3%, well ahead of the 5% to 6% target, helped by last year's restructur...