NYT Execs Come Under Fire at Recent Conference

If you're a New York Times Co. (NYT) executive -- or any newspaper executive, really -- now is not the time you want to be fielding questions from a roomful of banking types. Not without a flak jacket, anyway.

Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson and CFO Jim Follo took the stage at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference yesterday afternoon, and the questions they received bordered on downright confrontational.

One audience member wanted to know why the company, which slashed its dividend by nearly 75 percent a few weeks ago, didn't go further. "Why keep the dividend at all?" he demanded. "The notion that cash is flowing out of the company to equity -- it seems like you might not understand the gravity of the situation."

"We still continue to be profitable," Follo responded, adding that the new dividend of 6 cents a share strikes "the right balance between maintaining financial stability and returning cash to shareholders," in the company's view.

Of course, "shareholders" primarily means Sulzberger family members, whose cohesion is seen by some as critical to their continued ownership of the paper. Another audience member wondered how much longer it will be until the Sulzbergers sell out. "The family has made it very clear internally and externally that they have no intention of selling the company," Robinson replied. "They believe in the capital structure of the company as it exists right now."

But there wasn't much in her presentation to suggest the Times Co.'s fortunes will improve anytime soon. The brightest news involved sales of the Nov. 5 edition and related products commemorating Barack Obama's election. Altogether, it generated $1.7 million in revenue. And while that's the sort of thing that's hard to replicate, Robinson said there was hope that the edition marking Obama's inauguration would provide a similar windfall. "We do think these sales speak to the enduring value of newspapers in all of their facets," she said.

Comments

[swaps:]

The New York Times has been reporting the relentless outsourcing of jobs overseas, the relentless downsizing of companies to come up with interest payments for acquisitions.

Just as the New York Times knew that Castro was a communist, but did not report it, calling him an agrarian reformer, the vastly intelligent New York Times knows that implementing a global government requires the rich nations to deflate wages and prices bring them on par with the wider world.

This means they have to shrink their wages and balance sheet along with everyone else. What makes them think they are immune? Havne't they been covering this worldwide development month after month?

I own some NYT for nostalgia, not wise investment.

2008 Dec 11 02:56 PM

[Gedankonomist:]

"We still continue to be profitable," Follo responded...

Da! Pravda!

2008 Dec 11 04:10 PM