甘耐特集团分拆上市冰火两重天，甘耐特报业持续大幅下跌
7月2日：《今日美国报》为旗舰的甘耐特报业6月29日分拆后，连跌4天，跌幅扩大。而分拆的另一半，电视、数字业务部门Tenga却稳步上涨。分拆的连锁效应也出现了。由《今日美国报》创始人艾尔·努哈斯创办的华盛顿 Newseum（新闻博物馆）昨天被华盛顿邮报以长篇深入报道的形式，暴出连年亏损目前已经身处困境。
这个博物馆2008年开馆以来，一直由甘耐特基金会资助，其2008至2013年的总捐助额已高达2.08亿美元。目前甘耐特基金会已经改名为自由论坛（Freedom Forum）。
华盛顿 Newseum（新闻博物馆），右下角建筑为美国国会
甘耐特集团今天分拆上市，一切都在预料之中。甘耐特报业与电视、数字公公司Tenga表现冰火两重天。北京时间十点多的时候，Tenga上涨4.48 %，甘耐特报业下跌6.04%。
甘耐特集团今天（6月29日）分拆，分析师看好其广电资产将上涨20%，报业资产则被看衰。有分析师举了个例子，论坛报业自从去年7月被分拆后，其股价已经下跌了36%。
被与论坛报业相比较，甘耐特的人很恼火。但是，这并不能改变人们的看法。上周一，甘耐特举行了一次分拆前的投资者说明会。参加会议的投资者与分析师都认为，说明会一半令人鼓舞，一半气氛沉闷。讨论广电资产的那半场，阳光明媚，但讨论报业资产的下半场，阴云密布。
下面是周末 Barron's 和 INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY发表的两篇文章。观点惊人相似。
Gannett Split Could Lift Broadcast Shares 20%
Gannett is spinning off its newspapers to focus on broadcast. TV could shine, while publishing may flounder.
By ALEXANDER EULE June 27, 2015
When Gannett CEO Gracia Martore gave her last major presentation as a newspaper executive last week, it seemed like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The chief executive strode across the dais at the Park Hyatt, midtown Manhattan’s swanky new hotel, as she unveiledTegna, her new company carved out of Gannett’s prosperous broadcasting and digital segments.
After lunch, the signage in the room was changed, and it was time for “new Gannett” to share its plan for reviving publishing. The Tegna excitement was replaced by a depressing discussion about newspaper ads.
Such is the reality facing Gannett shareholders when the company officially splits in two on Monday, June 29. Technically, the newspapers are being spun out. Existing shareholders will get one share of new Gannett (ticker: GCI) for every two shares they already own in the parent company, henceforth called Tegna (TGNA). Tegna shareholders will own a company with 46 broadcast stations to go with fast-growing Cars.com and CareerBuilder Websites. The sites were created in the 1990s to snatch back classified ads that were being lost to the Web.
Longtime Gannett CEO Gracia Martore will lead Tegna, the broadcast business.Photograph: Monica Schipper/Getty Images
Gannett will continue to own USA Today, along with 92 local newspapers across the U.S., and a collection of British papers.
Tegna shares could easily rise 20% in the coming year. But Gannett will be lucky to tread water, as the company seeks a whole new shareholder base.
“Obviously, most investors’ appetite for publishing assets is not great right now,” says Joe Cornell, publisher of Spin-Off Research, who has carefully tracked other publishing spinoffs in the past two years, including Tribune Publishing (TPUB),Time(TIME), and News Corp (NWSA), the publisher ofBarron’s.
“You’re giving people a hot potato,” Cornell says of the newspaper stock. “I think you’re going to see a lot of guys blow it out.”
TEGNA, BY CONTRAST,could quickly increase its investor base, particularly without the newspaper baggage. The company’s revenue is estimated to jump 20%, to $3.1 billion, this year, boosted in part by the success of Cars.com and CareerBuilder.
Next year, TV will return to a starring role, thanks to the presidential election and the Olympics on NBC. Tegna is the largest independent owner of NBC affiliates. Its local stations, meanwhile, are concentrated in swing states like Colorado, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina, where candidates and political action committees will vie for every possible vote by buying pricey local TV ads. For 2016, broadcast revenue alone is slated to jump 18%, to $1.96 billion.
But Olympics don’t happen every year and neither do elections. For Tegna bulls, the most significant opportunity lies in boosting licensing fees paid to the company’s local stations. So-called retransmission fees have doubled in the past two years based on a projected $448 million in 2015. Yet, Tegna believes it’s still vastly underpaid for its content, particularly in comparison with ESPN, which makes roughly $6 for every cable subscriber.
“In most of the markets I’m aware of, if you added up all the retrans going to the local TV stations, it wouldn’t get you, at this point, to what ESPN is getting,” Martore toldBarron’slast week. “But that is going to be rectified.”
Tegna will have ample opportunity to close the gap. Some 90% of its retransmission deals expire in the next 18 months. “We’ve kept our deals at two to three years because frankly the market continues to reset,” she adds.
The higher fees will fall to the bottom line. Spin-Off Research estimates that Tegna could garner earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization from broadcasting of $861 million this year, on top of $386 million from Cars.com and CareerBuilder. If Tegna were to fetch an Ebitda multiple of 11—similar to peerNexstar Broadcasting Group(NXST)—the stock would be worth $37. Tegna’s shares will probably open on Monday at about $30.
RECENT HISTORY PORTENDS a less hospitable debut for the Gannett spinoff. Tribune Publishing is down 36% since it was spun off last July. Gannett’s “when issued” shares were trading last week at $14.90, for a market value of $1.7 billion. Spin-Off estimates that new Gannett will generate $388 million of Ebtida this year, down 18% from last year.
If they traded at a Tribune-like multiple— 4.5 times Ebitda—Gannett shares would be worth $15.70. But that’s a best-case scenario. The entire industry could get rerated downward if recent trends continue.
“New” Gannett CEO Bob DickePhotograph: Courtesy of Gannett
At last week’s investor meeting, Gannett said its first-quarter publishing revenue was down 9%. The culprit? “Core print advertising.” Results for the current quarter were trending in the same direction, Gannett disclosed. Don’t expect it to get much better anytime soon.
“At this time, we’re not planning to give specific guidance about revenue or earnings, Alison Engel, chief financial officer for new Gannett, told investors. “Volatility in our markets, particularly advertising, makes it difficult to accurately forecast revenues.” Not the kind of words investors like to hear.
Gannett’s new management team bristles at comparisons with Tribune. CEO Robert Dickey points out that Tribune was laden with debt when it began as an independent company, and lacks the national-to-local synergies that Gannett has with USA Today, providing content to a network of 92 local papers.
IF THERE’S GOOD NEWS for new Gannett, it’s that the spinoff amounts to a fresh start. The company has cut half of its workforce in the past decade, and it emerges from the parent company debt free. Shares will pay a generous annual dividend of 64 cents a share, a 4.3% yield, which could support the stock after the spin. “We now have the ability to manage our capital in a way that best fits our needs,” Dickey toldBarron’slast week.
Much of the capital could be used to quickly diversify away from print newspapers. “All of our attention is to be a digital company,” Dickey says. “The print platform will be there for some time to come, but that is not the future.”
Dickey tellsBarron’sthat his new company aims to make acquisitions totaling $200 million to $250 million a year. That’s a substantial sum in the publishing world. In 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. Gannett’s purchases could drive revenue, and eventually earnings, assuming that the company’s scale allows it to produce synergies and reduce costs at the acquired properties.
Dickey also says that Gannett’s nascent event-sponsorship business could be worth “tens of millions” in revenue. Gannett will need more opportunities like that to offset its fading newspapers. This year, publishing revenue is likely to fall 6%, to $2.99 billion.
Over the past two years, shares of the old Gannett gained 52%—well above the Standard & Poor’s 500’s 31% gain—driven by broadcast and anticipation of the spinoff. For investors, TV remains the main event.
Gannett Splits Up To Aid Transition To Digital
BY JON FRIEDMAN, FOR INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
For Gannett, the future is now. On Monday,Gannett (NYSE:GCI) will change the course of its 109-year-old corporate history when it follows what is by now the media industry pattern of splitting into two distinct companies in hopes of boosting stockholder value.
"The separation provides each company with enhanced strategic, operating, financial and regulatory flexibility," Gannett CEO Gracia Martore said last year in announcing the split.
The new entity, called Tegna (a reconfiguration of letters in the word Gannett), will encompass broadcast and digital operations. The Gannett company will consist of its traditional newspaper assets, including the national daily USA Today.
Two years ago, Tysons Corner, Va.-based Gannett's reputation as a broadcaster with newspaper assets flourished after its well-received acquisition of Belo, a Dallas-based media company heavier on broadcast rather than print assets.
The move showed Wall Street that Gannett wanted to be known more as a television company than as a print organization.
"By identifying the pieces, Gannett has increased shareholder value with this (split into two companies)," said Michael Holland, head of investment management firm Holland & Co. "Further, by splitting the parts of the company, the directors of Gannett have made it clear they are putting a priority on looking out for the investors."
Ahead of the split, Gannett stock touched a 7.5-year high above 38 on Tuesday.
Gannett has powerful assets, particularly in broadcasting. Its TV stations reach about a third of U.S. households and represent the leading affiliate group for CBS and NBC.
But perhaps a more intriguing factor will be the performance of the digital operations. "Digital" is the magic word today in the media industry. Every company wants to find a way to monetize its digital properties by creating a durable business model.
Gannett's digital challenge is two-pronged. It must continue to maximize its existing digital properties while coming up with new ones.
Gannett is not new to the digital realm. In addition to its news outlets' websites, the company controls Cars.com, the top online destination for automotive consumers, which presents credible and objective information about car shopping, selling and service. Gannett's CareerBuilder site offers help for job seekers, and its G/O Digital helps businesses with digital marketing.
But Wall Street demands consistent growth. To create it, companies must develop winning new products.
This digital growth quest is essential for media firms because the long-running business model that supported the newspaper and magazine industries for decades is broken. The Internet has diverted the ad revenue that had been the lifeblood of the newspaper business.
"Gannett's split is market-centric, not strategic," said media analyst Porter Bibb of Mediatech Capital Partners. "Investors don't really know how new media is going to play out, but they are certain that old media is a melting iceberg."
"The established print media companies are all wrestling with the transition to digital," Bibb said. All are "facing inevitable losses of revenue as their print products continue to lose subscribers and advertisers," he said, but "technologyand fiercely competitive digital companies may bail them out."
Among the mandates for news publishers these days: Find ways to include more video. This is essential because video — and video ads — work well with mobile devices and the millennials whom advertisers covet. When Gannett reported its Q1 earnings in April, the growth in its broadcast and digital operations compensated for reductions in print.
Media brands, though, still need to find a way to combine digital and print ads, and to figure out "how to end the war between print and digital editors, since making breaking news instantaneously available digitally seriously dilutes the printport," Mediatech's Bibb said.
Tegna will look for a fast start after the split, as Wall Street focuses on the newly independent company's prospects.
"The next question to be asked is: What do the digital properties have to do with the broadcast ones?" said Chunka Mui, a principal in The Devil's Advocate, a consulting firm that helps CEOs come up with solutions about technology.
"It might take one more unshackling to enable real innovation in Gannett's — or should I say Tegna's? — aging digital assets," Mui said.
Gannett/Tegna's analyst meeting Monday was only half impressive, according to FBR analyst William Bird. It "featured a peppy presentation and positive investment case for Tegna ... followed by a notably less dynamic investment story for GCI," Bird wrote in aresearchnote Tuesday. "We expect solid investor interest in Tegna and light interest in GCI."
