Tribune Co. shares could fall after newspaper's 'worst quarter'
By Leah McBride Mensching, Tuesday 17 July 2007 at 00:30 :: Newspaper Data :: #262 :: rss
Cash flow at the Tribune Company's largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, fell 27 percent in the second quarter, which could cause the company's shares to fall.
Publisher David Hiller wrote in a July 13 memo to employees that a 10 percent drop in sales, in addition to fewer advertising pages, couldn't be saved by gains in ad supplements and Internet advertising at the newspaper.
The slide has been “one of the worst quarters we have ever experienced,” Hiller wrote, added that other Tribune newspapers are suffering similar fiscal results.
The backslide will also make the company's $8.2 billion buyout from investor Sam Zell more difficult, analyst Ed Atorino of Benchmark Co. in New York told Bloomberg.
“It's going to cast a pall over the deal,” Atorino told Bloomberg in an interview. “The stock is going to go down.
Hiller said he disagreed with Atorino.
“The current trends across the whole industry are in the negative range,” he told Bloomberg.
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