BizJournals Portfolio
Dec 03 2007 12:00am EDT

I'd Buy NYT

I'm not a stock picker. I've put all my money in index funds. I've never worked on Wall Street. But why wouldn't you buy some New York Times stock, right now? The yield is 5.6%. It's around its 52-week low. It's selling for around $16, when it was at $50 in 2001 and around $35 just over two years ago. The market cap of the company is around $2.3 billion which is what a lot of PE firms leave in their desk drawer. I'm not saying anyone is going to buy the Times now or ever. And there's, of course, the Sulzbergers who vow not to sell and who have the voting stock that counts. But haven't we seen this movie before with the Bancrofts who were equally Pious? Is it really impossible to convince the family to sell if someone comes along with a serious offer? Current management of the company seems incapable of getting out of the mess. Unlike the Grahams of the Washington Post, who are led ably by Don Graham, my old boss, and have a market cap of $8 billion, thanks to the success of Kaplan, Pinch Sulzberger is Fredo. I just think the stock is so cheap that someone, at some point, is going to take a run at it. Maybe they'll be sucessful like Rupert was with Dow Jones and maybe they won't be, but at some point it's gotta go up.....


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