McClatchy earnings: Look out below!

Fourth-quarter earnings released Thursday afternoon. The company had a net loss of $17.46 per share vs. $3.40 a year ago. The stock was selling in the high 30s a year ago; today it's under $10.

Ouch.

 

Wow. Maybe I should just buy the damn company.

 

Here's the real kicker.

On March 18, 2005 -- less than three years ago -- MNI stock was at 74.80.

That is a real kick in the nutsack.

 

Wasn't Pruitt being hailed as a genius and received a fat bonus after the KR deal went down? It's too bad. It's still a good company, better than many, but I don't imagine they agreed to the deal thinking revenues would decline at their current rate.
Between McClatchy and Singleton, that KR deal is looking like a Momma Cass.

 

No. Buy Sun-Times Media Holdings.

I've been tracking that stock for a year, or since Smart Money decided to feature it as one of the "sleeper picks" or some such story.

At that time, the stock was trading at $5.60 a share and paying a dividend.

I bought 200 shares the other day... at $1. It closed today at 86 cents.

And that's sans dividend.

But getting back to McClatchy, you could almost see this coming, since -- as one analyst put it when they took over Knight-Ridder -- "It was like a dolphin swallowing a whale." In this market, not even selling off pieces was going to completely eliminate their long-term debt.

 

Hopefully you aren't one.

 

My last paper was a Lee paper. Let's see how they're doing today versus the past five years!

Feb. 27, 2003: $31.69
Feb. 27, 2004: $45.09
Feb. 28, 2005: $45.60
Feb. 28, 2006: $34.95
Feb. 28, 2007: $31.86
Feb. 28, 2008: $10.61

 

That not good. I hope you're safe, SC.

I'm puzzled as to why in your supposed "safe" (as if those exist anymore) market, they're wielding the axe?

 

Wow. I feel like a genius now. I left MNI in June 2006 and moved all of my stock into an IRA. I owe Pruitt a drink.

 

Where are the McClatchy layoffs?

I haven't heard of any at my shop (yet)

 

The Idaho Statesman has had at least one.

 

They actually posted a profit of 40 cents per share in the first quarter. The $17+ per share loss that got tacked on to it relates to a write down of goodwill from the Knight Ridder deal. Goodwill is more of less the value of your name, nothing tangible, and after the deal, they inherited a ton of it. Due to accounting rules, the value of goodwill has to be reevaluated every so often against the stock price. With the stock in the tank, it was inpossible to value the company's goodwill at 1.5 billion when the market values the entire company less than that.
So really, a huge loss off the balance sheet that was basically worthless anyways, but yeah, it was actually a profitable quarter.