McClatchy: A Kick in the Groin

I knew it was bad, but Forbes details how bad McClatchy’s fall is: As Steve Yelvington notes, the entire company now has a market cap of $1 billion, which is what it paid for the Star Tribune (which it sold for about half that, says Forbes). 

The stock has fallen from a split-adjusted high of $76.05 in 2005 to $12.75, a fall of 80%. It bought Knight Ridder for $6.5 billion, sold off papers to get $2.1 billion, but then wrote off another $1.37 billion and, again, today the whole kaboodle is worth only $1 billion.

“Total ad revenue was down 8.5% through the first 10 months of 2007 from the same period last year, including a vertigo-inducing 21% plunge in real estate ads and a 16% drop in automotive ads,” says Forbes. Ouch.