Martha Stewart Living Death Watch (Update)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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The effects of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s (NYSE: MSO) announcement that it would explore “strategic” options has worn off. This is to a large extent due to remarks made by Martha Stewart herself.

Stewart told All Things Digital, speaking about the company’s future, that “Everything depends on what it is. We’re a valuable company and we have very valuable assets…What we’re hearing each and every day is content is still one of the most valuable things companies can have. We are loaded with extraordinarily good content. All options are open.”

CEOs who say they will explore “all options” often mean they have no options.

MSO shares are off 8.7% to $4.85, which is about where they traded the day the firm said Blackstone “had been retained to review and respond to various parties that have expressed interest in potentially partnering with or investing in Martha Stewart, as well as exploring other opportunities.”

There do not seem to be any rumors that offers have started to stream in. On April 27, MSO disclosed an operating loss for the first quarter of $6.8 million, compared to loss of $3.4 million for the first quarter of 2010.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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