Times Mirror Posts 29% Rise in Income

Times Mirror Co. said Thursday that its first-quarter profit rose 29%, buoyed by growth in cable television, the sale of a publishing company and a lower tax rate. Lagging advertising sales, however, held revenue growth to a more modest 11%.

The company--which, among other things, publishes the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun newspapers, the Hartford Courant and Newsday in New York--recorded earnings of $75.1 million for the quarter ended March 27, up from $58.2 million in the comparable period a year earlier. Revenue for the Los Angeles-based company totaled $797.1 million, up from $715.8 million.

Quarterly profit benefited from continuing sales of Times Mirror’s timberland holdings, the company said, as well as January’s sale of Times Mirror Press, a publisher of phone books, to GTE Directories. These provided a pretax gain of $22.5 million.

Operating Profit Dips

Tax reform trimmed the company’s effective tax rate to 40.8% from 45.9% in 1987, and the company’s Irvine-based cable-television operation increased subscribers while boosting rates. Pretax operating profit for the cable unit increased 79% over the year-earlier period.

The quarter also reflected for the first time the absence of losses generated by the Denver Post, which was sold last December.

Operating profit for the newspaper group declined more than 8% to $75.2 million, which the company attributed to “sluggish” growth in advertising lineage as well as higher prices for newsprint at the same time that circulation growth increased consumption of paper.

Expansion of the New York City edition of Newsday and of several editorial sections of The Times, including Metro, Business and Orange County, also added to publication costs over the year-earlier quarter, the company said.

Broadcasting revenue suffered from the depressed economy in Texas, where Times Mirror owns stations in Austin and Dallas.

Besides its newspaper and broadcast properties, Times Mirror also has interests in book and magazine publishing.