Posted on 02/06/2007 11:53:50 AM PST by abb
McClatchy Posts Fourth-Quarter Loss of $279.3 Million After Taking Hit on Sale of Minn. Paper
NEW YORK (AP) -- McClatchy Co., the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $279.3 million Tuesday after taking a hit on the sale of its largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The net loss of $3.41 per share compared with earnings of $45.4 million in the same period a year earlier, or 97 cents per share.
Excluding the $354.8 million loss related to the Star Tribune, earnings came to $75.5 million or 92 cents per share, well ahead of the 85 cents analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast.
The better-than-expected performance lifted McClatchy's shares $1 or 2.6 percent to $39.76 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
In the year-ago period, also excluding the Star Tribune's results, McClatchy's profit from continuing operations were $34.1 million or 73 cents per share.
McClatchy is based in Sacramento, Calif. and publishes newspapers across the country, including The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star.
Revenue more than tripled to $673.6 million from $210.3 million a year ago, as the company absorbed 20 newspapers it bought from Knight Ridder Inc.
In late December McClatchy announced that it was selling the Star Tribune for $530 million to the investment group Avista Capital Partners, well below the $1.2 billion it paid for the newspaper in 1998.
Newspaper values have been hit hard in recent years due to slumping advertising trends as more readers and advertisers go to the Internet for news and information.
Excluding the effect of an extra week in the fourth quarter and adjusting for the additions of the Knight Ridder papers, McClatchy said that full-year advertising revenue edged up 0.5 percent, a relatively strong performance in the struggling newspaper industry. Total full-year revenue would have declined 0.4 percent on the same basis, due to a 4 percent drop in circulation revenue.
McClatchy's CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement that the overall advertising environment "grew more difficult" in the fourth quarter, and the company still expects advertising revenue to decline in the first half of 2007 but that it was too early to predict beyond that.
Pruitt said operating expenses fell 5.8 percent in the quarter. He said the company was still looking to reduce payrolls by attrition and was hoping to find other savings from lower newsprint prices and as it integrates the former Knight Ridder newspapers.
McClatchy said it plans to use the proceeds from the Star Tribune sale to reduce debt, which totaled $3.3 billion at the end of the year following its acquisition of Knight Ridder.
For the full year, McClatchy posted a loss of $155.6 million, or $2.41 per share, compared with earnings of $160.5 million or $3.42 per share a year earlier. Income from continuing operations for the year was $179.9 million, up from $119.5 million in 2005.
http://www.mcclatchy.com
"There was a land of Publishers and Editors called the Newspaper Business... Here in this pretty world Journalism took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Reporters and their Enablers, of Anonymous Sources and of Stringers... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone With the Wind..."
With apologies to Margaret Mitchell...
Ping
Here in Pittsburgh, the local (liberal rag) McClatchey paper is the Post Gazette. They are in bitter union negotiations now. The reporters recently said something like "We understand that the paper is losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter but we are not willing to give up the rights we have earned after decades of union negotiations". What a bunch of maroons!
booful pic!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780229/posts
World's oldest newspaper goes digital
Yahoo / AP ^ | 2/05/2007 | KARL RITTER
Posted on 02/06/2007 12:11:04 PM PST by Grampa Dave
World's oldest newspaper goes digital
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 5, 2:41 PM ET
For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.
The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals.
"We think it's a cultural disaster," said Hans Holm, who served as the chief editor of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar for 20 years. "It is sad when you have worked with it for so long and it has been around for so long."
Queen Kristina used the publication to keep her subjects informed of the affairs of state, Holm said, and the first editions, which were more like pamphlets, were carried by courier and posted on note boards in cities and towns throughout the kingdom.
Today, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, which means mail and domestic tidings, runs legal announcements by corporations, courts and certain government agencies — about 1,500 a day according to Olov Vikstrom, the current editor.
The paper edition was certainly not some mass-market tabloid. It had a meagre circulation of only 1,000 or so, although the Web site is expected to attract more readers, Vikstrom said.
The newspaper is owned by the Swedish Academy, known for awarding the annual Nobel Prize in Literature. But it recently sold the publishing rights to the Swedish Companies Registration Office, a government agency.
Despite its online transformation, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar remains No. 1 on a ranking of the oldest newspapers still in circulation compiled by the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers.
"An online newspaper is still a newspaper, so we'll leave it on the list," WAN spokesman Larry Kilman said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780229/posts
Pruitt Defends KR Deal After McClatchy Posts Q4 Loss
By Jennifer Saba
Published: February 06, 2007 10:25 AM ET, UPDATED 1:35 PM
NEW YORK The nation's second-largest newspaper company, McClatchy Co., reported a net loss of $279.3 million or $3.41 per share including discontinued operations in Q4 2006.
Still, McClatchy's CEO Gary Pruitt said during a quarterly earnings call this afternoon that McClatchy "had no plans to sell other newspapers ... or significant assets."
Pruitt also shed some more light on why McClatchy decided to sell the Star Tribune in Minneapolis -- a move that took many by surprise -- even given the company's two-year window to take any tax advantages from the sell off.
While the paper is profitable and had been "outperforming many metro papers," Pruitt explained, its exposure to classified and national advertising, the "quasi-competitive market" and the higher cost structure associated with operating in a metro market contributed to the decision to sell Minneapolis at the end of 2006. "We felt it was in the best long-term interest of the company," Pruitt said.
Revenues from continuing operations of the newly combined company, which includes the 20 papers acquired from Knight Ridder, were down 3.4% to $630.7 million in Q4 on a 13-week basis (2006 had one extra week during Q4, or a total of 14 weeks). On the same basis, advertising revenues dropped 3.1% to $539.5 million.
Retail advertising in Q4 slipped 0.7% to $256 million. National advertising fell 13% to $52.7 million. Classified decreased 5.5% to $181.7 million. Within the classified category, auto was down 4.1%, real estate was flat (down 0.1%), and employment declined 10.5%.
Circulation revenue in Q4 fell 3.1% to $71.7 million.
Pruitt acknowledged the challenging advertising environment especially the classified category, which is expected to take a massive hit. California and Florida are two states where classified real estate advertising is "tracking badly," Pruitt confirmed.
In California, in Q1, real estate classified advertising was up 49%, in Q2 it was up 46%, in Q3 it was up 25% and in Q4 it fell 0.1%.
The drop-off in real estate advertising is one reason that McClatchy is forecasting ad revenue to be down during the first half of 2007.
For 2006, on a 52-week basis, McClatchy said total revenue was down slightly, 0.4% to $2.45 billion while advertising revenue grew 0.5% to $2.09 billion. Circulation revenue declined 4% to $290 million.
"We believe once the results are in that McClatchy will have outperformed the industry in advertising revenue growth for the sixth consecutive year," Pruitt said in a statement.
Pruitt was still bullish on the Knight Ridder acquisition explaining that while the advertising environment is challenging, McClatchy "is better off" with the Knight Ridder papers, he said during the call. "The market will value [the deal] properly in the long term," Pruitt responded when asked if he was frustrated by the market's initial reaction to the transaction.
Online advertising revenue was also a topic during the call. When asked why McClatchy was building its own network with Tribune and Gannett as opposed to say joining the Yahoo alliance of newspapers, Pruitt said that building a national advertising platform was McClatchy's "top priority" but the company has not made any decision which way to go.
Jennifer Saba (jsaba@editorandpublisher.com) is associate editor of E&P.
Links referenced within this article
jsaba@editorandpublisher.com
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/mailto:jsaba@editorandpublisher.com">http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/mailto:jsaba@editorandpublisher.com
Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003542178
It is amazing how well their stocks have done in the past few weeks.
JPMorgan holds 5.4 pct McClatchy stake - filing
WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile , Research) holds a 5.4 percent stake in newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. (MNI.N: Quote, Profile , Research), according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday.
The bank held more than 3 million McClatchy shares as of the end of 2006, according to the SEC filing that indicated a passive stake.
That is two different buzzards that I combined, lol. Kind of different, lol.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.