Gatehouse offering buyouts

This is turning into a continually running thread. What is the over under on the number of pages it goes?

 

Two top execs, longtimes sales VP and longtime marketing VP both gone. I mean, you go on a buying spree, where do you think a company is going to get the money?

 

You sell more stock. Gatehouse keeps bumping up the dividend. It currently is $1.48 a year and the stock is $15.40. So the yield is just under 10%.

Gatehouse says they pay about four times EBITDA for a property. So they pay 40 million dollars for the newspaper, the Hapless Times, which has an EBITDA of ten millions dollars a year. Gatehouse would sell about 2.7 million shares of stock to yield hungry investors.

So Gatehouse adds cash flow of ten million and has to pay four million in dividends. That leaves six million of free cash flow. Gatehouse starves capital expenditures and pockets the rest. The problem is that revenues decline every year at the Hapless Journal by about five percent a year. While Gatehouse will continue to hack away at costs revenues continue to decline and the paper will go negative EBITDA. Then said paper will be consolidated or closed.

 

Here's the story about (hee, hee) Uranus:

The Uranus Examiner is coming to this Missouri town. Yes, really.

Also, it looks like a new paper has already started up in Carthage and it may get a competitor or two:

A new paper is up and running in Carthage

 

In the news video here, immortal words from on-site TV reporter:

“Lee, I'm live tonight in Uranus,
which is actually a tourist attraction ... ”

Controversy surrounds new Pulaski County newspaper's name

 

A friend -- actually, my first sports editor 20 years ago -- was laid off Friday in Providence. Not sure how many there were all together, but ...

 

Thoughts and prayers to everyone involved.

 

Screw the prayers. Send casseroles.

 

Offering buyouts, but buying more papers.

GateHouse Media buys The Oklahoman Media Company

 

The Uranus Examiner ceases publication.

Uranus Examiner Ends Publication, Blaming Judgmental People

 

Whoever named that newspaper must have had their head up their ...