Special thanks to my intern, Megan Brinkman, a soon-to-be graduate of Northwestern’s MBA program, who did most of the work on GCI this quarter due to a conflict I had with the conference call. The following summary was written by Megan and edited by me. Consistent with what we are seeing across the newspaper industry, […]
New York Times (NYT) reported mixed 1Q07 earnings. Results were basically in line with analysts estimates and recent management commentary but there were no signs that print advertising was stabilizing. Additionally, management lowered its forecasted growth rate for internet advertising in 2007 from 30% to something less than that without specifying a figure. Put this […]
AT&T (T) rose almost 1% yesterday, possibly in response to Wednesday’s afternoon’s press release indicating that the company’s U-Verse TV offering was beginning to gain some customers. U-Verse is T’s multichannel TV product designed to fill out is product bundle that already contains wireless and wireline telephony and high speed internet. U-Verse is based on […]
Time for a little mid-week Media Madness: • It appears that David Poland and I aren’t the only voices proclaiming that “movie theatres are dying” is a flawed thesis. According to this article, long-time media analyst William Kidd of Wedbush Morgan agrees with us. Bill’s report agrees with my thesis that most of the problem […]
The message from the 1Q07 results from Motorola (MOT) could be that the worst is over. However, you can also draw the conclusion that earnings power in 2008 remains uncertain. Put these together and the shares should not react too much to the latest news. EPS of 2 cents matched consensus and were at the […]
It is now official that private equity has arrived in Canada. BCE Inc. (BCE), formerly Bell Canada, has announced that is negotiations with a group of Canadian pension funds being backed by Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts. KKR was the in the original stories about a possible private equity-financed takeover of BCE but the stories which […]
Dow Jones (DJ) kciked off the 1Q07 reporting season for media compananies with better than expected performance thanks to strong ad pricing at the Wall Street Journal in March and tight cost controls. Adjusted EPS of 24 cents beat the consensus estimate of 19 cents as revenues of $507 matched estimates. Management reiterated guidance of […]
Just a few hours after Monday Morning Media Madness noted that Comcast (CMCSA/CMCSK) was building some potentially valuable and underanalyzed internet assets, the following crossed my email box from theflyonthewall.com: News Corporation, NBC Universal and Comcast Corporation announced a comprehensive distribution agreement in which Comcast’s Comcast.net and Fancast.com will serve as key distribution sites for […]
Here is your Monday Morning Media Madness for April 16, 2007: • A tough comparison against a $40 million opening for Scary Movie 4 pulled the box office down 5% this past weekend. The weak comparison does little to year-to-date comparisons which remain up 6%. With the a very strong release schedule for the summer […]
Back on April 5th, following a press release from Endeavor Acquisition Corp (EDA), updating investors on its acquisition of American Apparel (AA), I noted the news was mixed but thought that the good news (17% same store sales growth) would outweigh the bad news (a reduction in 2007 estimated EBITDA growth and the likelihood of […]
