Posts for Ticker ‘MDP’

What Is Time, Inc. Worth?

bearThere have been rumors recently that Time, Inc., the Time Warner (TWX) publishing division and the largest magazine operation in the country, might be spun off to shareholders in much the same fashion that AOL will be toward the end of the year.

What is Time, Inc. worth? Probably $3.5 billion, unless TWX management decides to cut costs at the operation to significantly improve margins. In the first quarter of the year, Time, Inc. did a bit worse than breakeven on $822 million in revenue. Assuming some pick-up in advertising revenue in the last quarter of the year, the company will probably have 2009 revenue of $3.5 billion and operating income of $250 million. Read More »

Martha Stewart (MSO): Firing The Wrong Person

Martha Stewart Living (MSO) CEO Susan Lyne was asked to leave the table today. Two other executives at the company replaced here. The market did not like the news and pushed the stock down over 3%.

Odd, MSO shares have outperformed Time Warner (TWX), News Corp (NWS), CBS (CBS), and Meredith (MDP) over the last three months. They have done almost as well year-to-date.

Neither of the people replacing Lynn has done a terribly good job. Wenda Harris Millard runs the media group. In the last quarter, advertising was flat at $40.7 million. Robin Marino who runs merchandising turned in equally dismal results with the revenue in her group slightly down at $13 million.

Anyway, always nice to get a raise.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Top 10 Pre-Market Analyst Calls (BVF, CERN, GIGM, IRBT, MHS, MDP, SII, STLD, STI, TRI)

These are not all of the analyst calls, but these are ten of the calls affecting shares this Wednesday morning:

  • Biovail (NYSE: BVF) cut to Sector Perform at CIBC.
  • Cerner (NASDAQ: CERN) raised to Buy at Jefferies.
  • GigaMedia (NASDAQ: GIGM) started as Nuy at Brean Murray.
  • iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) raised to Buy at Kaufman.
  • Medco Health (NYSE: MHS) raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
  • Meredith (NYSE: MDP) cut to Hold at Citigroup.
  • Smith International (NYSE: SII) raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; also cut to Perform at Oppenheimer.
  • Steel Dynamics (NASDAQ: STLD) cut to Hold at Citigroup.
  • SunTrust Banks (NYSE: STI) raised to Market Perform at KBW.
  • Triad Hospitals (NYSE: TRI) started as Overweight at JPMorgan.

Jon C. Ogg
April 23, 2008