Monday, December 17, 2007

GCI on track to rank No. 2 worst stock of 2007

That dubious honor is among newspaper stocks, of course! It goes to Gannett -- assuming current stock trading trends stay pretty much the same while Wall Street counts down to the last trading day of the year, two weeks from today. The year-to-date performance of major newspaper publishers I track, based on Friday's closing prices:

And compare that to:

What do losers and winners have in common? GCI and other losing stocks lack strategies Wall Street believes will work. (Renaming newspapers "Information Centers?" Puh-leeze!) Winners include publishers with more non-newspaper assets (News Corp.'s MySpace, Washington Post's Kaplan test prep service) or plans to sell out (Tribune, Dow Jones).

[Data: Google Finance; photo: New York Stock Exchange traders at work last week, by Brendan McDermid, Reuters]

2 comments:

  1. Gannett stock down? Say it isn't so? How could this happen? Hmmmmmm. Major corporation cuts thousands of jobs systemwide. Oh yeah, we matched employee 401(k)s with company stock purchases. Guess that's a lot of cash the company is no longer putting into its own stock. PANIC! Investors spot initial decline and decide it is time to sell! Sell! Sell! Company sees stock price fall further...must get rid of more liabilities i.e. employees to make company more attractive to investors. Stock price takes another hit...I can't imagine why.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So, THAT's how it works!

    ReplyDelete

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.