Monday, July 07, 2008
Wall Street woes cont'd: GCI stock tumbles 4%
Updated at 6:19 p.m. ET: Gannett shares fell a stomach-churning 3.9%, closing this afternoon at $18.83 -- and adding to last week's hair-raising plunge. Today's slide means GCI's stock has fallen by nearly one-third in the past month alone, Google Finance says.
15 comments:
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."
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Gannett's headed for $15 / share by Labor Day, if not before. Pay close attention the comments Dubow, Martore, Saridakis, Dickey (whomever is allowed to speak) make to Wall Street on the next call. If they continue to "stay the course" and insist that the Information Center model is working, well, then ... Wall Street already doesn't believe that tall tale.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm looking for is what is planned for the 45 "new" jobs in Digital, the ones being funded by the dissolution of Gannett News Service. Given Gannett's track record of painfully slow change in a dynamically changing business world, what possibly could these 45 people be doing to move the business quickly and positively. At last check, only 10 of the positions had been filled.
By the way, did anyone happen to catch this headline (Reuters report) on Romenesko last Thursday: "Number of analysts following the newspaper biz dwindles"? Here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/6bet5y
I just read an article that stated Gannett was purchasing 100% equity in Shoplocal. That doesn't make any sense. Did they buy it because the other partners wanted to get rid of it or is their a purpose.
ReplyDeleteSomeone must believe in their digital message or they must have an open checkbook.
On another front, who's the "genius" who thought up this promotion (from today's Daily News Summary):
ReplyDelete"Marketers are seizing on consumer anxiety over gas prices to sell a variety of things including airline tickets and cheeseburgers. The Journal News at Westchester County, N.Y., has deployed salespeople to hang out at gas stations and offer a $20 gas card when someone signs up for a $234 annual subscription to the paper (WSJ, p.B5)."
I’m sorry, but who – in these financially difficult times – thought consumers would be willing to spend $234 to get $20 in return? They might as well sell Gannett stock to the poor bastards. Especially when the $234 gets them something they don’t need to pay for online. This is the old newspaper model – again – at work within Gannett.
And, from experience, I can tell you $20 doesn’t even fill up a hybrid anymore.
Sigh.
At the rate things are going, $19.35 is going to look good at the end of the day. It's at $18.68 as of this writing. Next week is gonna be real interesting...
ReplyDeleteGM went under $10 for the first time since the fifties last week. We've got plenty of time to lose yet, June 1964 Gannett stock was a buck and a half.
ReplyDeleteNot to say that General Motors and Gannett share any strategies on future growth....
$18.56 / share at 2:10 p.m., down $1.04 on a volume of 3.7 million shares.
ReplyDeleteDubow and Martore need to go. Now. Even the board must realize this, right?
AND don't insult the front-line employees by giving Craig and Gracia a nice "parachute" on their way out the door. They haven't earned a dime extra, especially after their generous bonuses for their "commendable" 2007 performance.
"Gannett's headed for $15 share by Labor Day, if not before."
ReplyDeleteDuh, more like by the end of this week.
The bell has sounded. Gannett closes the day down 77 cents at $18.83 on a volume of 6.1 million shares.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine shared these Crosby, Stills & Nash lyrics - from "Wooden Ships" - with me the other day. Very appropriate for Gannett, I thought ...
Horror grips us as we watch you die,
All we can do is echo your anguished cries,
Stare as all human feelings die,
We are leaving - you don't need us.
Go, take your sister then, by the hand,
lead her away from this foreign land,
Far away, where we might laugh again,
We are leaving - you don't need us.
Sell it while you can...a buck and a half is lot less than 18.83
ReplyDeleteI left McClatchy and rolled my stock account into an IRA about 18 months ago, when the share price was around $40. Much of the stock had been bought when the price was $50, $60 or more, although we got a 15% employee discount. I didn't try to figure it out in detail, but I guessed I came out with a relatively small loss.
ReplyDeleteNow with McClatchy stock under $6, I'd like to say I was smart, but it was really just an accident of timing. I left the newspaper biz because I didn't think I could stick it out for 15 more years, but no way did I foresee the company losing 90% of its value in a year and a half.
john, a friend of mine sold his Lee stock not too long back at $42 a share so that he could put a down payment on a house. It closed today at $3.15. Same thing - he took a bit of a loss over what he paid, but nothing like what current holders are...
ReplyDeleteThe majority of a Directors time is spent on the following, predicting how much maney we will make, reporting what we actually made, explaining the variance, planning for cuts. I spend the majority of the last few days trying to find expense savings, and not on securing new business and revenue from people who are interested. Wake up, let us go out and sell and stop counitng and cutting, counting and cutting, counting and cutting.
ReplyDeleteCutting and more cutting is obviously taking its toll on The Journal News in Westchester. Monday's front page and web presentation on a major local transportation project was riddled with mistakes. Readers on the STORY COMMENTS section of the website blasted the papers professionalism pointing out the major mistakes in a map diagram and photo captions. The diagram has traveling arrows the wrong way as if people were driving in England. And photo captions named the wrong street that appeared in the photos. When the readers know more and are more accurate than the newspaper it is time for Gannett to get out of town. I guess the cutbacks and the mass exodus of experience journalist has taken its toll on this struggling operation. The paper has no place in the community and is a joke
ReplyDeleteCount and cut, it is very scary when we spend more time planning cuts then we do planning improving the product and increasing revenue
ReplyDeleteThe upside is that many Gannett employees now only have to have 67 miles of mileage reimbursement to afford a share of stock.
ReplyDelete