New York Times reported terrible 1Q08 results. Adjusted EPS of 4 cents missed the consensus of 14 cents. Revenues of $748 million were a little short of the $752 consensus. 1Q07 EPS were 17 cents so this quarter represents a total collapse in profitability. Making matters worse, March advertising revenues decelerated further even after for […]
Cable stocks have acted pretty well this year. Comcast is up a bit and Time Warner Cable is down slightly. Both have easily outperformed the S&P 500. The other large cap cable stock, Cablevision, is down about equal to the market but at year end it was still in the process of being taken private, […]
News Corporation shares traded down 4.6% on Monday in response to a downgrade from Bernstein Research analyst Michael Nathanson. Nathanson lowered his rating from outperform to market perform, cut his price target from $24 to $21, and lowered his earnings estimate by 7% for FY08 and 4% for FY09. Prior to this downgrade, Nathanson shared […]
The Wall Street Journal wrote a damning and extremely damaging article about one of Northlake’s long positions. The story on American Apparel (APP) appeared on the front page of the Saturday edition. As someone who had done his homework and read the filings, most of negative news in the article was nothing new to me. […]
I remain long Disney across Northlake client accounts including my own accounts. Down just 3%, the shares have acted fairly well this year compared to many other media investments, particularly those with significant advertising exposure. Performance of the shares in the near future is a battle between the possibility that the economy drags down earnings […]
Time Warner (TWX) shares are down 10.8% so far this year, lagging most other large cap media stocks. News Corp (NWS) is down 6.1%, Disney (DIS) is down just 3.7%, and Viacom (VIA) is down 5.2%. The largest single component of TWX’s valuation is Time Warner Cable (TWC), whose shares are down less than 1%. […]
Controversy about monetization of revenue and profits at MySpace has held back shares of News Corp so far this year despite outstanding December quarter earnings, increased guidance for the fiscal year ending this June, and commentary from Rupert Murdoch and other senior executives stating that so far the company is feeling any impact from the […]
Apple has staged a strong recovery, rising 33% from its 2008 intraday low in late February. The beta effect during the recent rally certainly has helped but continuing good news on Mac sales and speculation over the 3G iPhone have been equally responsible. A long-time friend and institutional salesperson, JK, recently IM”d me noting that […]
With all the writing I do on the movie business, sometimes I fear that I miss the big picture. Weekly box office or holiday DVD sales can be important factors in short-term trading of movie-related stocks but the long-term trends are less volatile and more important for a fundamentally based investor like me. With that […]
Merrill Lynch has put out the latest edition of its quarterly report on pricing trends in travel industries. I summarized this report last quarter because it think it offers insights into both inflation trends and the health of the economy. The inflation link is self-explanatory. On economic health, my theory is that pricing in travel […]
