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Remind me never to hire Barclays for financial advice
By adamg on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 12:00pm
In December, one Barclays Capital analyst declared the Boston Globe was worth, at most, $20 million.
Now the Boston Business Journal reports another Barclays Capital analyst puts the value of the Globe at $192.8 million, assuming NYTimes Co. (which paid $1.1 billion for the paper in 1993) would sell it.
Do these guys just make this stuff up?
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Comments
Whats more puzzling is the
Whats more puzzling is the fact that the stake in the Red Sox is producing a decent yield and yet they are getting rod of it. I don't know if the 10 million quoted is for the whole team or for their roughly 20 percent stake in the team but it seems to me that its an asset that is paying off with almost no work on their part and should not be sold.
rod and reel
they are getting rod of it
As opposed to getting A-Rod? Sorry, couldn't resist.
The stake in the Red Sox is
The stake in the Red Sox is quoted at $150 million after taxes. I don't know what figure he placed on the overall value (taxes and the fact that it is a minority ownership position could affect the NYT stake).
The NYT needs cash, although not as much as before the Slim deal, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Red Sox don't spin out a lot of cash.
Maybe it was just a typo,
Maybe it was just a typo, and a 0 got lopped off of $200m?
This one, however, is actually a report.
As I explained on the original thread, what the putative analyst had done in that report was to take the EBITDA for each of the Times' components, and multiply it x3 to produce the low-ball estimate, and x5 to produce the upper end of the range. That analysis was plainly specious. (Its author holds the position of assoicate director [sic] at Barclays, and clearly didn't put the slightest effort into his report.) If the Globe had lost $4 million, instead of earning it, the same method would have concluded that the Times would have to pay someone up to $20 million to take the property off its hands. I'd certainly volunteer.
The new report actually includes, well, analysis. It's written by Craig Huber, the top-rated analyst for the entire media industry, whom Barclays acquired from Lehman. And it attempts to answer the question that the last report never even posed: how much could the Times realistically realize on the sale of these assets, given present market conditions? It's that last part which makes even this analysis more than a little dicey. It's simply not clear who would want to purchase the Globe or T&G right now, or whether any investor might be able to arrange the necessary financing. But I see this as a good-faith effort that's at least in the right ballpark.
I would agree with you...
I would agree with you... after all if the Globe really were only worth 20 million dollars Mitt Romney would have bought it a long time ago with his petty cash just to get them off his back (same could be said of Kerry/Heinz as well.)