The company attributed the erosion in its margins to its ongoing promotional and discounting activity, which has been the hallmark of its strategy to support its franchise partners during the recession.
As a result, the print franchise has continued to expand its network through the recession, recording a net increase of seven outlets over the six months to 30 September 2009.
Chief executive Tony Rafferty said: "We are adding outlets on a net basis. We are doing more new deals than that figure actually sets out and that is chalk and cheese different from what I believe any of the other networks are doing."
However, one apparent casualty of the global financial meltdown has been Printing.com's master licence agreement with Icelandic firm KVOS, which has been terminated by mutual agreement.
"[Iceland] is a country with a population the size of Cardiff and we felt there were better areas for us to put our efforts into and I guess our Icelandic partners needed to go back to their core marketplace," said Rafferty.
"We've swapped one of the smallest western democracies for one of the largest in the United States over the past year and that's a change we're content with."
Meanwhile, the company recorded a £400,000 capital investment for the period, predominantly in its Flyerlink software, which Rafferty said was gearing up for a major outing at next year's Ipex 2010 international print trade show.
"We've been planning this for more than three years now and we will be demonstrating at Ipex our vision for the next 10 years, which is based around a complete suite of e-business tools designed to deliver out-of-the-box functionality," he said.
"We believe our partners will have to transact more business per person per month in five years than they do today and to enable that to happen in a sustainable way we've got to develop e-business tools to help our franchises transact more efficiently – that's at the heart of our philosophy."
The company, which has approved the payment of a total of £1.8m in final and special dividends, will maintain its cautious approach into next year, according to Rafferty, who said it was prudent to maintain a "seige mentality" against the difficult economic climate.
He added: "My belief is that it's not going to get that much worse, whether it drops a little bit after the stimulus comes off next year remains to be seen.
"I think over the next 12 months we will see some return to positive GDP but it's too early at the moment to call, so at the moment we still keep our seige mentality heads on."
Printing.com's turnover for the six months was £7.1m (down 0.7% year-on-year) and total retail sales were £13.2m (up 0.1% year-on-year).
