Nothing is sacred except the flagship newspaper, New York Times Co said on Tuesday, addressing investor concern over a sluggish share price and calls by an investor group to sell non-core assets, acording to Reuters.
The company, whose stock has sunk 35 per cent since a high last June, faces a proxy battle by dissident shareholders Harbinger Capital Partners and Firebrand Partners, who aim to push the company to invest more heavily and quickly in digital businesses.
Details from the Reuters report:
The dissident group, which owns 19 per cent of the company's publicly traded Class A shares, is seeking four board seats up for election by shareholders at the next annual shareholder meeting on April 22. The other nine board members are elected by the Ochs-Sulzberger family.
"We are not married to any one asset, other than the New York Times newspaper," Chief Financial Officer James Follo said at the annual Bear Stearns media conference in Florida, referring to the newspaper and its website. But he added, "We're not going to do a deal until the valuation is right."
The role of the Times newspaper in setting the US news agenda was highlighted again this week with its report that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had been linked to a prostitution ring. Times executives at the Florida conference said the story had helped boost traffic to its NYTimes.com website by 60 per cent.
Wall Street analysts and sources familiar with the dissident investor group's thinking have identified the Boston Globe, the estimated $1 billion New York Times building in Times Square, and a collection of regional newspapers as possible candidates for a sale.
Chief Executive Janet Robinson, according to an Associated Press (AP) report, noted that the Times launched 50 blogs in the last year and has also enhanced topic-themed areas on its website in health, business and technology and inked one deal with CNBC to provide online video and another with Monster.com to create cobranded job search sites.
The report said:
"In this era, no media company can afford to be an island," Robinson said at a a question-and-answer session during a conference sponsored by Bear Stearns and made available through a Webcast.
Robinson didn't refer explicitly to a challenge being mounted by Harbinger Capital Partners, an investment firm that has taken a 19 percent stake in the company. But her remarks appeared aimed at assuring investors that the Times was moving aggressively.
Harbinger, working with a New York University marketing professor, is trying to get its own set of four directors elected to the Times board, saying the company should move more quickly to shed disparate assets and invest even more in the online operations of its flagship newspaper.
