The company, which owns hundreds of small to medium-sized newspapers including The Carthage Press, Neosho Daily News, and the Joplin Daily rose 33 cents to $19.81 per share today after announcing it would increase its dividends from 32 cents to 37 cents per share.:
And some questioned the wisdom of the GateHouse's initial public offering last year because of the tough conditions. GateHouse said, however, that its focus in small and midsize papers was sparing it the worst readership declines which were hitting larger, more prominent ones.
So far, GateHouse's focus seems to be helping as the company also announced healthy earnings Friday. The company reported fourth-quarter net income Friday of $7.8 million, or 23 cents per share, up from $3.3 million, or 15 cents per share, the same period last year. Revenues were $97.9 million for the period ending Dec. 31, up from $52.6 million last year.
The results were a surprise for Wall Street. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had expected only 10 cents per share.
7 comments:
How IRONIC!
NEWSFLASH
As of Friday, March 9, JoplinDaily.com has gone under! It seems if GateHouse Media is doing well, then their papers wouldn't be going under one by one in the Midwest Region. Wait, maybe the Midwest region needs to look for a new "Regional Manager" as Mr. Watson's days may be numbered because his lack of knowledge in TODAY's newspaper industry!!!
Oh, the irony.
Well of course profits were up in the fourth quarter. It's called Christmas advertising, people.
And on JoplinDaily, I'm just surprised the company let it run this long. Sure there was some initial excitement (and advertising) when it first came out, but it quickly became evident the product was not going to create continual local buzz by itself and they certainly did nothing to draw attention to their efforts. No billboards, TV ads or even an appearance on a morning news show.
Random feature stories aren't going to draw attention in a large town like Joplin. The sports stories are copies of MSSU releases. Just nothing to get excited about.
And a daily web newspaper? How often does that work? And how can anyone expect it to be profitable in the first year? Nobody over there knows how to use the internet to develop a solid business model. Judging from the lack of advertising on the local gatehouse sites, local advertisers know that investment on a web site brings little or no return unless you're trying to get folks to visit your porn site. Looks like Watson didn't do his homework.
It's a shame the employees over there got suckered into wasting their time and careers.
I hope the Globe isn't so petty as to blacklist Hacker. If they are smart they will offer him a job there immediately. He is too talented to let go just because he let Watson talk him into a poorly conceived project that evidently lacked long term support.
I'm pretty sure the Globe IS that petty.
The Globe invented petty.
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