News Corporation, parent company of The Times, said last night that it was no longer in active negotiations about a possible divestment of MySpace, its social networking site, in the week after Microsoft abandoned its pursuit of Yahoo!

The media group, reporting its third-quarter results, had talked to both Yahoo! and Microsoft about alternative deals that would have entailed News Corp injecting the fast-growing MySpace into a larger internet company.

However, Peter Chernin, the News Corp company president, said that he was no longer involved in conversations with Microsoft, and that “he had not had a conversation with Yahoo or AOL in the last couple of weeks” — a statement endorsed by Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive.

However, Mr Chernin said that News Corp remained willing to pursue “any strategic conversation that does make sense”, after the company conceded that its internet business would fall short of an 80 per cent growth target by “about 10 per cent” — taking its annual revenues below $1 billion (£512 billion).

The statements came as the company improved operating profits in the quarter to March by 16 per cent to $1.4 billion, aided by profit growth at the company’s US television units and its newspaper operations. Net income trebled to $2.69 billion, enhanced by a $1.7 billion gain on the sale of the company’s stake in the US satellite broadcaster DirecTV to Liberty Media.

Newspaper income increased by $60 million to $216 million, helped by reduced transition costs to the company’s new printing presses in the UK. The British titles, which include The Sun as well as The Times, reported an unspecified increase in profits, while advertising and circulation revenues were “in line with the previous year”. A sale of the company’s Wapping site is also expected in the next three months.

The figures also included $21 million of maiden profits from Dow Jones, which would have been $23 million higher were it not for non-cash amortisation changes. A year ago, profits at the business acquired by News Corporation for $5 billion were $37.9 million.

Mr Murdoch, though, said that the acquisition remained in its early stages, and noted it was “not factually correct” that purchase of the company behind The Wall Street Journal, whose Editor, Marcus Brauchli, resigned last month, was a move back into the print business.

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