CBS Earnings Confirm Value (CBS)

CBS (CBS) reported earnings results as a separate company yesterday for the first time since being spun off from Viacom. This morning's Wall Street Journal has a good piece on the subject (paid sub. req'd) by Brooks Barnes.

WSJ.com's for CBS differ from those I've been using. I should note that, for what it's worth, WSJ.com gets its numbers from Reuters. It says the company is selling for 0.97 times book value and 0.82 times sales. The market cap is listed as more than $19.45 billion with 772.71 million shares outstanding. The dividend yield is 2.54%.

Does any of this change my view of CBS? No. It's still one of the cheapest large media companies around in a sector that's undervalued in general. Some investment analysts say it deserves to be this cheap, but I like owning undervalued and boring assets. For a few years, anyway. ;-)

In a nutshell, I view CBS as undervalued -- period -- with a top-notch management team committed to shareholders thrown in for free. They've already boosted the dividend by 14% and announced plans to sell the first of what could be several "non core" assets later this year.

I'm staying tuned (I own the stock). . . probably for 3 to 5 years.