Seeking Alpha

A.H. Belo: Hidden Value Or Value Trap?

Mar 12 2013, 07:20 by: Investing 501 | about: AHC, includes: BLC, GCI, LEE, MEG, MNI, WPO

Editor's notes: If A. H. Belo's management can monetize hidden assets, investors will get its newspaper business for free.

On the surface, A.H. Belo (AHC) seems to be a relatively easy company to analyze. In 2008, the company was spun-off from the Belo Corp. (BLC) The main business is four newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, The Denton Record-Chronicle and The Press-Enterprise. What complicates the analysis is that AHC also received valuable unencumbered real estate assets ($100 million +), a 3.3% ownership stake in Classified Ventures (CV) and a huge unfunded pension liability ($145 million). The purpose of this article is to look at the company as both a "sum of the parts" investment idea and as a going concern investment idea. The four main areas I am going to look at are:...