Postmedia share price plummets

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      The price of Postmedia Network Canada Corp.'s class C voting shares have taken a tumble.

      The company owns 10 daily papers—including the Vancouver Sun and Province—as well as canada.com and Infomart.

      This month, the share price of PNC–A (the class C stock) fell from $1.50 to 87 cents.

      In its last quarterly results ending May 31, Postmedia reported an operating loss of $95.6 million.

      That was significantly worse than the $4.1-million operating income reported over the same quarter of 2012.

      This year's quarterly loss before income taxes was $112.2 million, compared with a $12.1-million loss over the equivalent period in 2012.

      Print advertising was off by 13.5 percent compared to the same quarter of 2012.

      Through the first nine months of this fiscal year, the company has posted a net loss of $118 million, compared to a net profit of $5.1 million in the first nine months of the last fiscal year.

      Comments

      5 Comments

      W

      Sep 4, 2013 at 12:28pm

      No surprise that being the mouth piece of the wealthy doesn't pay.

      They should try reporting real news fully and completely rather than the spin needed to maintain the status quo.

      RUK

      Sep 4, 2013 at 2:12pm

      Actually, business papers are, as Chomsky points out, pretty reliable because investors demand facts.

      No one would take the word of a single paper as the whole truth, anyway. But it is important to have a diversity of voices. The MSM is one of those voices, like it or not. Therefore, I'm sad and somewhat alarmed by the decline in the newspaper industry. And all because people like me want to read the news for free on the internet. Well, we're gonna get what we pay for.

      LB

      Sep 7, 2013 at 11:17am

      @RUK But the Sun and the Province are not "business papers" and Chomsky's point was actually about the business *pages* in the New York Times. The Sun and the Province and the other Postmedia outlets (supposedly) report on all news areas, not just business, and for decades they have done this in a highly ideological, demonstrably well-to-the-right-of-centre manner. It does not help that Vancouver's (and BC's) two main dailies are owned by that same corporation. In short we have never enjoyed the variety of news that you speak of. Vancouver and much of BC has long lacked, for example, anything close to adequate print journalism. Certainly no voice critical of our lack of regulation of resource extraction activities on crown land. Not since all the critical journalists were fired in the mid-90s... And yes, now we're left with internet news sources. If you want anything critical, you have to go to the Tyee or Vancouver Observer, which unfortunately preach mainly to the converted and don't reach a general audience. Total failure of print journalism in this province - though the Times Colonist can be pretty good. And oddly it's a Postmedia paper! But it's a whole other complicated story.

      Newshound

      Sep 8, 2013 at 12:22am

      Yeah...like anyone actually believes what they read in the Georgia straight?

      Bill Piket

      Sep 10, 2013 at 12:43pm

      This newspaper chain, created by Conrad Black, has done more than a little to push politics to the right in this country. Its leading paper, the National Post, has been both a financial and a political disaster, and is dragging the rest of the operation down. The Sun and the Province, with their advertising monopoly, help subsidize the Post. I hope they go bust.