GCI shares ended a wild week on Friday, closing at $22.87, down another 3.4%, as stock markets overall reeled from a combination of escalating oil prices and more trouble in the financial sector. Gannett stock is now trading at levels last seen in early 1992.
For the week, GCI plunged a whopping 11.3%, Google Finance says, on May's dismal revenue report and a management shake-up at flagship USA Today. The chart, above, also shows changes for the week in the:
- S&P-500 Index: down 3.1%
- New York Times Co.: down 4.6%
[Data: Google Finance]
With a little luck and some tailwind, it will be at 19.99 in two weeks, a blue light special. There are so many things going against this company. The biggest is the decline in revenue. You can have the smartest or the less than smart, but if the dollars aren't coming in the stock will come down. It's the same at each and every newspaper company.
ReplyDeleteI sort of have to laugh here as a veteran journalist who worked for several once-great family owned operations. This all comes down to one thing - bad investment strategy.
ReplyDeleteCompanies like Gannett, Tribune, CHNI, Freedom, take your pick, thought 20 some odd years ago that investing in newspapers was a good idea.
They offered famillies hundreds of millions of dollars to sell out. This coupled with the estate tax laws of the day really gave these families no choice but to sell.
What were once newspapers dedicated to providing news and public service to the communities in which they were located all of sudden found themselves as no more than a few paragraphs inside an annual report to shareholders - shareholders who could care less about the communties served by their new investments.
Now it's all of us from Dubow on down who are stuck trying to make what turned out to be great short-term, but terrible long-term investments work.
Newspapers should be locally owned. Perhaps that day will come again in some form.
ReplyDeleteIt must be said that when I was working for Gannett my paycheck never once bounced.
ReplyDeleteI can't say the same for my experience with family owned newspapers.
And while pining for locally owned, the fiasco in Santa Barbara always intrudes. It has been my experience that big companies focusing on profit have fewer axes to grind than small owners who want to see their "truth" in print.
But $22 stock? I just never imagined the company would lose value the way it has over the last few years.
Several years ago, posting on the Yahoo messages boards(before blogs were invented), someone took my identity and were making posting trying to have Gannett's stockholder believe it was me, trying to influence the markets value of a share of Gannett. I did contact the SEC,(who told me to go to D.O.C), about an investigation with the possibly of having Gannett stock froze, until it could be determent who was doing it. Since I no longer use a PUBLIC LIBRARY'S COMPUTER, and no longer use Yahoo. When Gannett's stock took this big of a fall, I sometime wondering if it is happening again.
ReplyDeleteI have worked in the newspaper business for 30 years, the last eight for Gannett. I am painfully aware of what is happening with the company and the industry. Unfortunately, this blog and many people who post here seem to take some sort of perverse delight in the problems. I prefer to focus on what I can do to try to help. The job I save may be my own.
ReplyDeleteI sneer out of anger at the wrongheaded corporate culture that has made wrong move after wrong move over the past decade and a half. Go back to News 2000 -- it's been all downhill from there. We have constantly played to the lowest common denominator and cut resources time and again. Whenever there's a choice to be made, you can count on corporate making the wrong choice.
ReplyDeleteWhatever I -- or you -- try to do to help is irrelevant. Personally, I feel like I fight like hell every day for the good of the company and for the good of journalism. However, the forces that are in charge of this runaway train are far beyond our ability to stop it, or to change its course. It has gone on too long and I fear all we can do is watch the crash.
I happen to work at a Gannett paper whose circulation has tended to either be flat or to rise slightly quarter to quarter. We must be doing something right. However, we're expected to do the same things online and in print that the failing Gannett papers are doing. Why should that be?
Corporate doesn't even trust its success stories. So -- management reaps the whirlwind that's coming.
That's just it -- the highest management won't reap a negative whirlwind. Their financial picture is secure. It's the workers who will pay the price.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why responses like the first on on this blog post -- "With a little luck and some tailwind, it will be at 19.99 in two weeks, a blue light special" -- make me angry.
I have a mortgage to pay, three kids in college and serious worries about my family's future. The last thing I want to see is some jerk's wishes that the company stock price contine to decline.
In short, he can shove his "blue light" special.
After years of hearing from managment that "We have stockholders " to answer to.
ReplyDeleteWhen are the StockHolders going to STAND up and say WE WANT ANSWERs!!!!!!.
Amen to that Anon @ 1:41 ...
ReplyDeleteEven Carl Icahn understands the system is broke, not just Gannett. Check out his blog post from Wednesday:
http://www.icahnreport.com/
Nothing will change, however, until the Proletariat rise up against the Bourgeoisie. (In a manner of speaking ... )