Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Nexstar Broadcasting's stock hit an all-time low last week, but it rebounded slightly, according to John Boyd's article in today's San Angelo, Texas Standard-Times. The stock has fallen from $9.23 per share at the first of the year to $4.52 last week, the article said.
It is back up to $5.59.
''Essentially, Nexstar is not a company that is profitable,'' Scott Marlar, vice president of Dreher Co., a San Angelo investment analyst firm, told the Standard-Times. ''The consensus is that they're not going to be profitable for the next couple of years.''
Nexstar owns KSNF and is the de facto owner of KODE in Joplin.
Boyd asked Nexstar Chief Operating Officer Duane Lammers if the stock's drop had anything to do with the battle with cable companies over retransmission rights. Nexstar has pulled its stations off Cable One in Joplin, Vinita, and Independence, and off Cable One and Cox Communications in a number of Texas and Louisiana communities.
''You'd have to talk to people buying or selling stock,'' Lammers told the Standard-Times. ''We had to learn what was going to happen when we went off cable. Nobody predicted that it was going to be good.''
Lammers told the newspaper all broadcasters were having a downturn, but the article indicated that Nexstar's was by far the steepest decline.

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