Trinity Mirror, the publishers of the Daily Mirror, Manchester Evening News and Daily Record saw its share price fall by 22% today.

They were punished despite the fact that the company had reported a tripling in pre-tax profits for 2010, which had largely been achieved by aggressive cost-cutting. In the year it managed to cut operating costs by £65m, which contributed to a profits rising from £142m to £123m.

However, what has spooked the City is a poor start to this year, where total advertising revenues were down 10% and fears that costs – especially newsprint which has gone up in price by 20% – will be very hard to keep under control. The company has identified another £10m worth of cuts this year but has admitted this will be more than offset by rising costs.

Overall, Trinity Mirror reported a 6.9% fall in like-for-like revenue in 2010. This figure is arrived at after stripping out the £51m revenue contribution of recently acquired GMG Regional Media, which brought Trinity Mirrors total revenue up to £761m for the year.

The company attempted to put a spin on this by arguing that this represented an improvement given that revenue were down by 12.4% in 2004.

“However,” said one analyst, “the markets clearly believe that the company now needs to develop strategies rather than simple cost engineering if it is going to develop.”

The shares closed today at 66p.