Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

Making more money is fine. It’s the fundamental principal of business.

The issue with Gannett and other similar places is they have no idea how to run a profitable shop.

 

If you derive profits from a product, it helps when you can provide a product that people value and there is demand for. Any jackass can increase profit by finding a cheaper way to make something people pay X for - the trick is ensuring that people will still play X for it down the line.

 

GannettHouse usurped a lot of shops where publishers knew all too well how to make money running a newspaper and had a good grasp of the margins.

The problem is, GannettHouse chased them all off and replaced the revenue production with circ, legal and ad people that took a paycheck and didn't GAF. It got worse after the GateHouse takeover of Gannett.

 

Gannett Hit With Reverse Discrimination Suit

 

This was post #1 from 31 months ago.
Are they even close?

 

I'll lift a glass for Logan Barry in this lawsuit.

 

A little less than 2,000,000. I would have to go trhough a couple of the old earnings releases to be absolutely sure but I think least quarter the number of electronic subscribers declined.

 

What's the churn rate? How many of those subscriptions are at full price?

My guess at those numbers: 75 percent and 10 percent.

You know quarterly statement and earnings releases, etc., better than I do, so perhaps they'll mention it in there. Or maybe not.

 

This is a rough estimate that I calculated based upon the numbers the company discloses in their press releases.

I calculated that Gannett generated about $72 in circulation revenues from each digital subscriber, or about six bucks a month. The Arizona Republic has the largest daily circulation in the chain. They charge $1 for the first three months and $14,99 for a regular subscription. I suspect the Republic has a higher regular monthly subscription rate than virtually all the other outlets in the chain but I would guess about half the subscribers are on discounted rates.

In the second quarter of this year Gannett generated about $6,50 monthly but electronic circulation declined by four percent from the end of 2022. The higher revenues per subscriber combined with lower circulation numbers would indicate that the discounted customers are fading away.

 

Stuck at just under two million subscribers. About half are on the dollar a month, introductory plan.

 

I usually post about Gannett's quarterly results. These are my takeaways from Q3.

1. Total revenues down nine percent. Same store sales down a little over eight percent.

2. Total digital revenues flat. Abut half the digital subscribers are on the $1 a month introductory offer.

3. Mike Reed is quoted in the earnings press release as saying the company has completed another successful quarter in its transformation.

So nothing has changed at Gannett.

 

I posted this on the Gannett AI thread, but it seems pretty relevant here as well. A robot couldn’t do much worse than Mike Reed.

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