Lee Enterprises near bankruptcy

It's so you can watch the latest Mary Junct "all is peachy" video, and for the distribution of the amended Lee Enterprises prayer card, where objective No. 1 now reads, "Grow revenue as fu***** fast as humanly possible!"

 

No video or prayer card at my staff meeting.

 

We got letters today acknowledging the end of company profit shares and reduced company matches in 401(k)s.

 

Losing a quarter of your value on one trading day is never good, but could have been way worse for company supposedly on the brink:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=LEE

 

All that came out of our meeting was a public announcement of the dividend suspension and the change to the match for the 401(K). We used to get a match up to 4 percent; now, we get a half-match up to 4 percent (our 4 percent, they match with 2 percent).

No layoffs, so I guess we should consider ourselves pretty lucky. And I'm pretty fortunate in that none of my 401(K) was tied into Lee stock.

 

Profit sharing? Someone's actually MAKING a profit these days? Do tell!!

 

Everybody's making profits, Mark. They're just making less than what they used to, less than what they projected and, more importantly, less than what they told the shareholders they'd make. Hence, the slashing and burning.

 

Not everybody. Many. Maybe a majority, maybe not.

 

For the most part, we're way beyond shareholders.
You don't declare bankruptcy because of shareholder pressure. You declare bankruptcy because of failing creditor obligations.

 

Lee took on too much debt when it bought the Pulitzer chain, on the heels of buying the Howard chain. The corporation deviated from the traditional business model that had worked wonderfully for decades when it expanded way beyond its historical 30-40 small to mid-sized daily newspapers and associated shoppers.

 

Open Enrollment is coming up. Wonder how we'll get fucked ...

 

I'd posted earlier this month that the fact that Lee stock hadn't plunged precipitously after bankruptcy warnings were made public was a good sign - not realizing that the news followed the closing bell (doh!)....
The company's stock has lost more than half it's value since then and an additional 20 percent since Buckweaver's post earlier today. An analyst in this story says the company "...has enough room under its recently amended credit agreement to make it to 2010 before a potential breach of its debt agreements..."
I wouldn't want to own a ton of the company stock, but I'm not sure there are too many print journos (employed) who can ask for much better than hearing their company will remain solvent for at least another year....

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081114/lee_enterprises_mover.html?.v=2