Dow Jones: Ugly But Not A Disaster

Dow Jones (DJ) reported 3Q05 EPS of 12 cents, below consensus of 13 cents. The press release stated that 4Q05 EPS would be in the low to mid 30 cent range against current consensus of 47 cents. The press release went on to note that weekday ad lineage for the Wall Street Journal would be […]

New York Times: Still Too Early

Maybe it is the redundancy of listening to my fourth newspaper conference call this earnings season but I found little of interest in the New York Times (NYT) earnings release or conference call. The company slightly exceeded its sharply reduced guidance, reporting 21 cents before adjustments against guidance of 15-20 cents. Revenue, expense, and margin […]

Knight-Ridder: Cheap But No Earnings Growth

Knight Ridder (KRI) reported results in line with reduced expectations following management’s lower guidance a month ago. Excluding unusual items EPS came in at 67 cents, down 18% from a year ago. Revenue was flat and shares outstanding were down about 10% so the problem in the quarter relative to its industry peers was on […]

Swapping Some Small Cap For Large Cap

Although I rarely make a trade intra-month in Northlake’s model driven ETF investments, last Wednesday morning I moved half of the small cap value exposure to large cap value. This resulted in a swap of the Russell 2000 Value ETF (IWN) into the Russell 1000 Value ETF (IWD)….

An Exciting and Illuminating Week for Apple Computer

In the extended comments section at the bottom of this post is the commentary I wrote for StreetInsight.com immediately following Apple Computer’s conference call discussing its September quarterly earnings. As it turned out, I was right that the Street was overreacting when the shares were trading down 10% in after hours trading during the conference […]

E.W. Scripps: No Sign of Weakness Yet at Cable Networks

E.W. Scripps (SSP) reported earnings in line with consensus but stronger than I had been anticipating. I came quite close to buying October or November at the money puts yesterday but in the end I decided against. As noted in my preview comment, I have a growing concern that fundamentals of the cable network business […]

Tribune: Addressing Unique Issues But Industry Challenges Remain

Tribune (TRB) are up over 2% since reporting 3Q05 earnings and conducting a conference call on Thursday morning before the open. The key takeaway from the report and call is that TRB is putting its unique issues in the past and the company’s fortunes will begin to closely track the newspaper industry. Given poor trends […]

Gannett 1Q Results: Nothing To Get Excited About

Gannett (GCI) shares initially bounced about 1% off of depressed levels in response to the company’s 3Q05 earnings report before retreating to new lows as the market fell on Tuesday and Wednesday. The quarter was pretty much in line with expectations and no unexpected news came out on the conference call….

Extra, Extra: Newspaper Stocks Face Long-Term Challenges

Quick Summary: Earnings estimates have come down steadily all year and several companies have pre-announced earnings misses for 3Q05. The stocks should be trading well below historical multiples even if you believe that certain issues are cyclical. It is still too soon to take long positions in the group even though most of the stocks […]

M&A Might Drive Interest in Media Stocks

Monday’s close on the S&P 500 was the lowest since May 18th. That is not what I wanted to talk about today but I was a little surprised as I scanned back that I had to go back almost five months to find the last lower close. Ouch. Bye-bye to all those summer gains. I […]