McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, plunged to a record low after reporting a 19 percent drop in July advertising sales as U.S. newspapers continue to be staggered by the economy.
Total revenue fell 16 percent to $167.8 million, Sacramento, California-based McClatchy said today in a statement. Print-ad sales fell 22 percent to $120.4 million after a 23 percent slide in June, the steepest this year.
Print ad revenue fell 26 percent in California and 29 percent in Florida as the U.S. housing slump curbed demand for real-estate ads. McClatchy is eliminating about 10 percent of its workforce, freezing wages for a year and evaluating its dividend to help reduce costs and $2.1 billion in debt.
"We would expect continued weakening of margins and earnings growth,'' Alexia Quadrani, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said today in a note to investors. There are "no signs yet of a bottom,'' she said.
McClatchy, which owns 30 daily newspapers, fell 23 cents, or 5.7 percent, to $3.78 at 4:04 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the lowest since the company first sold shares to the public in 1988. A year ago today, the stock traded for more than $22.
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McClatchy's rotten summer
3 comments:
As one from the Modesto Bee getting laid off, my advice is to take the money and RUN...FAST, and don't look back! This buy out is just a precursor to what is coming. It started out as a buyout at the Bee, then 15 got laid off,then production gets the lay off notice and now everyone left is getting the buy out offer. Do you see a pattern here? Try to get everything coming to you...vacation pay, use your sick leave, hold on to your 401k and get every last penny you can get them to contribute to it (look at the quarterly match dates). Try to get the buy out AFTER January 1st as getting it in the last quarter will really mess up your reportable income for the year. Good luck to you all!
Anonymous - good advice. Fort Worth is going through another round of layoffs... what are the odds the N&O, Charlotte, Sacramento, Miami Herald, Lexington, etc etc will have their announcements soon?
Burn, baby, burn!
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