News Corp. posts
FeedPosted Nov 12th 2009 6:00PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World, Marvel Entertainment (MVL)
Disney (DIS), the media company behind Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear, and whose colleagues in the industry include CBS (CBS), General Electric's (GE) NBC Universal, News Corp. (NWS), Sony Corporation (SNE), Time Warner (TWX), and Viacom (VIA), reported results for Q4 and the full fiscal year on Thursday after the bell. While the bottom line came in ahead of expectations, I have to say that the release was disappointing to this shareholder.
Earnings on an adjusted basis for the quarter came in at 46 cents per share, higher than the number predicted by analysts. Unfortunately, as I go through the data, I don't think I'm too comforted by such income performance.
Continue reading Disney's Q4: Bob Iger beats Wall Street, but he needs a better plan for the studio
Posted Nov 11th 2009 9:00AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Marvel Entertainment (MVL)
Disney (DIS), a media business that competes with Viacom (VIA), CBS (CBS), News Corp. (NWS), and General Electric's (GE) NBC Universal, will be talking up its fourth-quarter numbers on Thursday after the bell. Are you a shareholder? If so, are you excited? Well, don't get too excited, because we might not be getting any growth, even if the Mouse beats on the bottom line. According to Earnings.com, the call is for 40 cents per share versus the 43 cents per share made in the comparable period.
You know what, though? For the most part, I'm not so concerned with exactly how much Disney makes this quarter. I'm a shareholder, and I want to see management at least come in at the estimate, of course, but I'll be more interested in the conference call. Way more interested this time around, in fact.
Continue reading Disney to report earnings Thursday: Should investors be excited?
Posted Nov 7th 2009 3:40PM by Trey Thoelcke (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Time Warner (TWX), Viacom (VIA), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), Clorox Co (CLX), Comcast Cl'A' (CMCSA), Dean Foods (DF), News Corp'B' (NWS), Garmin Ltd (GRMN), World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
Continue reading Earnings highlights: CBS, Comcast, News Corp., Time Warner, UBS, Viacom ...
Posted Nov 6th 2009 4:20PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Television, General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World

Shares of
CBS (NYSE:
CBS) are no longer rolling around in the pits of equity hell. Do you recall when they were trading around $3 per share? Nasty time it was. Amazingly, as I write this, CBS is hovering near a 52-week high. They are well over $12 in value.
Yet, when I look at the latest earnings report, I don't feel as upbeat as the market. According to the press release (the link goes to a .pdf file), revenues were flat for the third quarter and adjusted income dropped to 25 cents per share from the year-ago figure of 39 cents per share.
Continue reading CBS challenged in Q3, waiting for better advertising climate
Posted Nov 5th 2009 8:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), the big media conglomerate that competes with Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, issued Q1 data on Wednesday after regular trading was over. Revenues declined 4%, but earnings per share went up 10% to 22 cents. According to Bloomberg, that was enough to beat analysts by four pennies.
That's pretty decent for the company, but there are a couple of spots in need of serious help. It goes without saying that the newspaper industry is having a rough time, so it's not so hard to understand why the news groups experienced a significant decline in operating income.
Continue reading News Corp. beats forecasts, but television business is weak
Posted Nov 3rd 2009 2:20PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), News Corp'B' (NWS), Hasbro Inc (HAS), Media World
Viacom (NYSE:
VIA), a content player in competition with
News Corp. (NASDAQ:
NWS),
Time Warner (NYSE:
TWX),
Sony (NYSE:
SNE), and
General Electric's (NYSE:
GE) NBC Universal, issued
Q3 numbers today. If we had a different market on our hands, I think the stock would have reacted better to the news. Revenues were down 3%, but adjusted income rose 25% to 69 cents per share. According to
Bloomberg, the bottom line came in well ahead of estimates, which were pegged at 57 cents per share.
Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, the company's A shares are down slightly as I write this by about 0.6%, and the B shares are just about flat. Like I say, if the broader indexes were in an uptrend this afternoon, we probably would have seen a pop in the stock.
Continue reading Viacom does well in Q3, but there is still work to be done
Posted Oct 13th 2009 9:00AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Analyst reports, General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Marketing and advertising, Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the advertising market could be ready for an upswing. Michael Morris, an analyst at UBS, is making a connection between improved sales at retail stores and a robust environment for commercials and the like. His reasoning is sound: if retail businesses are doing better, then they might want want to take advantage of new cash levels to invest in marketing initiatives aimed at bringing in traffic.
Indeed, the advertising industry has been in the dumps. Any good news is welcome. Media entities such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, are counting on increased opportunities to sell their respective inventories at better prices.
Continue reading Will media companies benefit from a better advertising climate?
Posted Oct 5th 2009 8:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), News Corp'B' (NWS), Film
The movie-going public was in the mood to see a classic Hollywood horror archetype over the weekend: zombies. Yep, the walking dead, made popular by George Romero so many years ago, were feasting in darkened theaters across the country. According to Box Office Mojo estimates available at the time of this writing, Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Zombieland made the most money at domestic theaters over the past weekend, taking in $25 million.
Sony also captured second place with its computer cartoon, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. That film is on its way to a total haul of over $100 million. At the moment, it has better than $80 million in the bank. Shareholders of Disney (NYSE: DIS), however, had their own computer cartoons in the marketplace as well. The double feature of Pixar's Toy Story and Toy Story 2 came in third with $12 million. To be honest, I thought the idea of running those two back-to-back would be too much to take for the attention spans of the younger crowd. I know it would be way too much for me to take.
Continue reading Sony's zombies consume competition at box office
Posted Oct 2nd 2009 9:00AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Google (GOOG), General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Netflix, Inc. (NFLX), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is feeling a little heat from studios Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal. The major media companies would all like to make more money from Netflix's business model, according to BusinessWeek.
No one is really satisfied these days with the DVD industry. Growth in home video is no longer what it used to be. So content makers perceive a need to engage new strategies to offset the this lack of expansion. It would be nice if those strategies were confined to innovation in movie development and the reduction of project budgets. Instead, trying to negotiate more beneficial deals with distributors such as Netflix will probably be the focus of media execs.
Continue reading Content companies want more money from Netflix
Posted Sep 27th 2009 1:40PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Internet, Google (GOOG), General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
I caught an item over the weekend at paidContent about paying for content. Come to think of it, what else would you expect to find over at that site? All joking aside, paying for content in the digital age is actually a very serious issue for media investors. If you're a shareholder of Disney (NYSE: DIS) or General Electric (NYSE: GE), as I am, then you know both of those businesses have ample exposure to intellectual properties that management would like to exploit over the web. For a fee, of course.
The paidContent piece discusses research apparently conducted by a News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) subsidiary that suggests consumers would be willing to pay for stuff on the internet. All I can say is, I hope the research turns out to be accurate.
Continue reading Will media companies ever get people to pay for web content?
Posted Sep 21st 2009 8:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), News Corp'B' (NWS), Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
Sony (NYSE: SNE) had a tasty weekend. The studio's new computer-generated cartoon, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, finished the box-office race in first place. According to Boxofficemojo, Meatballs (and I am only shortening the title to Meatballs because, from what I've seen, most media outlets are using this standard; as far as I'm concerned, the movie should be shortened to Cloudy so as to avoid confusion with the classic Bill Murray comedy), made $30 million at domestic theaters as of early estimates. Don't worry, though; even if the estimates come in a little lighter than expected, Sony is going to remain top dog.
That's because the next two films on the chart are each credited with around $10 million. Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Informant! and Lionsgate's (NYSE: LGF) Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself settled into the second and third spots, respectively. These two could conceivably change places once final stats are delivered to analysts.
Continue reading Sony tops at the multiplex with 'Meatballs'
Posted Sep 18th 2009 3:40PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World, Film, Marvel Entertainment (MVL)
I read a surprising article over at Boxofficemojo by Brandon Gray. The author highlighted the foreign financial performance of News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) computer-animated cartoon Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the third entry in the popular franchise. Amazingly, Dinosaurs has now grossed $667 million at theaters outside the domestic market.
What's so interesting about that? Well, it means that the project now occupies third place on the all-time foreign chart. Gray says the number-one film on this chart is Titanic, which was a co-production between News Corp. and Viacom (NYSE: VIA). Coming in second is Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Continue reading News Corp.'s 'Ice Age' sequel proves Pixar isn't only game in town?
Posted Sep 14th 2009 4:20PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Television, General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), CBS Corp 'B' (CBS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World

Last year, I composed a
not-so-bullish appraisal of NBC Universal's Jay Leno strategy. NBC Universal, which
General Electric (NYSE:
GE) has an 80% stake in, wanted to make sure that Leno's services did not wind up in the hands of a competing media entity when they handed
The Tonight Show over to Conan O'Brien, so they bestowed upon him a talk program to be aired weeknights at 10 PM. It debuts tonight. I basically argued that NBC would survive without Leno, and that such an odd programming choice at 10 PM, when scripted intellectual assets are usually broadcast, might not be the optimal paradigm to engage.
Well, I still feel this is a risky move, but I do have to say that an article by Scott Collins over at the Los Angeles Times has piqued my interest in the expected economical benefit that Leno-at-10 might imply. Leno might not bring in a ton of eyeballs, but his profit margin could be acceptable given the lower capital necessary to fund his extravaganza.
Continue reading Should GE shareholders be happy about 'The Jay Leno Show'?
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