Looking today at week-over-week shares outstanding changes among the universe of ETFs covered at ETF Channel, one standout is the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (AMEX: XLY) where we have detected an approximate $95.4 million dollar outflow — that’s a 2.1% decrease week over week (from 84,553,252 to 82,753,252). Among the largest underlying components of XLY, in trading today Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX) is down about 0.1%, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is down about 0.8%, and Target Corp (NYSE: TGT) is higher by about 0.4%. For a complete list of holdings, visit the XLY Holdings page » …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Markets
Tag Archives: TWX
Newsroom Cutbacks Force Consumers to Flee News Outlets
Filed under: Job Market, Unemployment, Layoffs, Economy, People
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK — Years of newsroom cutbacks have had a demonstrable impact on the quality of digital, newspaper and television news and in how consumers view that work, a study released Monday found.
Nearly one-third of consumers surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said they have abandoned a news outlet because it no longer gave them what they had counted on, either with fewer or less complete stories.
Pew’s annual State of the News Media report delivered what has become a common litany of grim business statistics. Television news viewership is down. Newsroom employment at newspapers is down 30 percent since a peak in 2000 and has gone below 40,000 people for the first time since 1978. Newsweek shut its print edition and Time magazine is cutting staff.
“These cutbacks are real,” said Amy Mitchell, the project’s acting director. “And based on the data that we’ve collected, they are having an effect.”
Government coverage on local television news has been cut in half since 2005, the study said. Sports, weather and traffic now account for 40 percent of the content on these broadcasts; yet that’s just the sort of information readily available elsewhere. That’s a recipe for future erosion, Mitchell said.
Forty-two percent of adults under age 30 counted themselves as regular local news viewers in 2006; last year that was down to 28 percent, the study found.
Cable news is increasingly cable talk, although it’s difficult to conclude whether that is because of financial considerations or the sense among executives of what viewers want. During the last five years, CNN, a unit of Time Warner Inc. (TWX) has sharply cut back on produced story packages and live event coverage, the study found.
During the presidential campaign, reporters increasingly acted as megaphones instead of investigators, Pew said. More stories are simply reporting verbatim what candidates or partisans were saying, rather than using those statements as a starting-off point to explore an issue.
There are many more places that people can go for news or information now. The question is whether consumers are leaving prominent news organizations because they are not getting what they want, or whether these outlets can no longer afford to give them more because consumers are leaving, said David Westin, former ABC News president.
“Increasingly, it’s not just a question of what people want,” said Westin, who presided over an era of cutbacks at ABC News, owned by Walt Disney Co. (DIS). “It’s what people are willing to pay for.”
More organizations …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Splitting Up Can Be Beneficial To Your Net Worth
By Robert Lenzner, Forbes Staff Corporate spinoffs are all the rage these days, not the least reason being the concept that the market may value the two parts of the spin off as far greater than the original combined operations. One immense success is that over the 7 years since Viacom spun out its holdings in CBS shares, both companies have substantially outperformed the market averages– proving that the split up was a win-win for all Viacom shareholders. CBS has done even better than Viacom– up 77.1%, aided lately by a split up of its own– a spin off of the entertainment complex’s outdoor advertising operation into a REIT that will be another income producer for CBS shareholders by passing through its income. Viacom itself has gained 50.6% in value helped in part by regular reductions in the number of shares outstanding from open market repurchases. By comparison, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gained only 24.2%- half Viacom’s performance, a third of what CBS shares have done. The spinoff by Time Warner(TWX) of Time Warner Cable (TWC) has been no slouch either. Since January, 2010 it looks to me as if TWC has doubled in price, while TWX surprisingly has gained 67% TWC, almost wholly owned by large institutional investors sells at $91.58, earning $6.90 a share or selling at 13 times earnings per share and yielding almost 3%. Who would have guessed how the strategy would pay off. Now, Time-Warner is planning to give its own shares another beneficial jolt upward by spinning off Time’s entire magazine empire into a separate public company. This venture into a declining print media business may not turn out so well for TWX shareholders; so I’d imagine you’ll see a great deal of selling pounding the magazine company. And it was just 2 decades ago that brutal battle was fought over these operations. Rest in peace Steve Ross. I’d venture a guess that the stellar performance of News Corp. shares these past several months to over $30 a share, a better than 50% return since the scandal-ridden days of hacking cell phones in the UK knocked the shares well below $20. News Corp. now is planning to spin off its newspaper publishing operations in a separate company, while concentrating itself on the Fox television and movie business— while building out a sports channel competitor to ESPN. Don’t count Murdock out. He’s got a lot of life left in him. Spinoffs and would-be spinoffs are going on across American business, in part because some companies have determined that running a huge food company like Kraft might benefit its shareholders by placing some of its far-flung assets in a separate company. I believe you may see many more operations spun-off from global multinationals that investors could find more promising than the huge conglomerate where they were hidden from sight– and perhaps not managed aggressively enough. There is even an index for spin-off stocks– the Beacon Spin-Off Index, and ETFs like the Guggenheim Spin-Off ETF(CSD), which ha an exceptional …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
24/7 Wall St. Closing Bell — March 8, 2013: Markets Maintain Buying Trend (TIF, SKUL, TWX, HL, AAPL, FNSR, HRB, P, WDAY, ANN, FL, CSIQ, CHYR, DKS, RENN, P, VALE, VOD)
Filed under: Investing
U.S. equity markets opened higher this morning mostly on the strength of a far-better-than-expected report on U.S. non-farm payrolls and a lower-than-expected unemployment rate of 7.7% (more coverage here). In Europe, German industrial production was flat while Spain’s declined a bit less than estimated. The French prime minister said the county needs to save €5 billion in spending this year, and he expects to achieve that through spending cuts. In Asia, Japan’s GDP growth for the fourth quarter was revised to flat with the previous year, again better than expected. The country also posted a small — and unexpected — trade surplus. China’s trade surplus was also larger than expected, likely due to the impact of the lunar new year holiday in February. Fitch downgraded Italy’s sovereign debt shortly after noon, briefly chilling investors (more coverage here).
The U.S. dollar index rose 0.73% today, now at 82.686. The GSCI commodity index is up 0.8% at 646.65, with commodities prices mixed today. WTI crude oil closed up 0.4% today, at $91.95 a barrel, up 1.4% for the week. Brent crude trades down 0.3% at $110.85 a barrel. Natural gas is up 1.3% today at about $3.63 per million BTUs. Gold settled up fractionally today at $1,576.90 an ounce, and up 0.3% for the week.
The unofficial closing bells put the DJIA up about 63 points to 14,392.46 (0.44%), the NASDAQ rose about 12 points (0.38%) to 3,244.35, and the S&P 500 rose 0.42% or more than 6 points to 1,550.77.
There were a several analyst upgrades and downgrades today, including Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) cut to ‘sell’ at Canaccord Genuity; Skullcandy Inc. (NASDAQ: SKUL) cut to ‘underweight’ at Piper Jaffray and cut to ‘underperform’ at Raymond James and D.A. Davidson; Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) raised to ‘buy’ with a price target of $68 at Argus; Hecla Mining Co. (NYSE: HL) raised to ‘buy’ at Global Hunter; and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) reiterated as ‘outperform’ with a price target of $600 at Credit Suisse.
Earnings reports since markets closed last night resulted in several price moves today, including these: Finisar Corp. (NASDAQ: FNSR) is down 8.7% at $14.46; H & R Block Inc. (NYSE: HRB) is up 9.2% at $27.27 after posting a new 52-week high of $27.50 earlier today; Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) is up 17.1% at $13.74 after posting a new 52-week high of $14.70 earlier today (more coverage here); Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY) is up 0.9% at $62.20; Ann Inc. (NYSE: ANN) is up 7.7% at $31.23; and Foot Locker Inc. (NYSE: FL) is down 6.9% at $32.89 (more coverage here).
Before markets open Monday morning we are scheduled to hear from Canadian Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: CSIQ), Chyron Corp. (NASDAQ: CHYR), Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (NYSE: DKS), and Renren Inc. (NASDAQ: RENN).
Some standouts among high-volume stocks today include:
Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) is up 17.1% at $13.74. This Internet radio company not only posted results that investors liked, the company’s CEO announced that he is leaving.
Vale SA …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Time Warner Is Spinning Off Time Inc. Magazines
Filed under: Company News, Media
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Time Warner Inc. (TWX) said Wednesday that it will spin off the magazine unit behind Time, Sports Illustrated and People into a separate, publicly traded company by the end of the year.
CEO Jeff Bewkes said in a statement Wednesday that the decision to split off the Time Inc. magazine company will give Time Warner “strategic clarity” and enable it to focus on its TV networks including TNT, HBO and CNN, and its Warner Bros. studio, which produces movies and TV shows.
He said the move would create value for shareholders, similar to the company’s previous spin-offs of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and AOL (AOL).
In recent weeks, Time Warner had been in talks to combine all of Meredith’s magazines with Time Inc.’s lifestyle titles such as People, InStyle and Real Simple. But talks broke down over a value for the combined company and over which magazines from Time Inc. would be included in the mix, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meredith said Wednesday that it respected Time Warner‘s decision and hoped to work with it on future opportunities. Meredith publishes magazines aimed at women such as Better Homes and Gardens, Fitness and Family Circle.
Time Warner shares rose 79 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $56.25 in after-hours trading following the announcement, after closing up 41 cents at $55.46. Shares of Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith fell 80 cents, or 2 percent, to $39.50 in after-hours trading after closing down 86 cents at $40.30.
Analysts have estimated that the Time Inc. division is worth around $2.5 billion.
Time Warner said the spin-off would be tax-free to its shareholders.
The move completes the years-long unwinding of a media and telecoms giant formed in 2001 when America Online, an Internet access company, used $147 billion worth of inflated stock to buy Time Warner, in what has been regarded as the worst corporate merger of all time.
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Expected company synergies never materialized. Over the years, Time Warner moved to spin off the cable TV hookup business as well as AOL in order to focus on its profitable and growing TV and movie businesses.
Matthew Harrigan, an analyst with Wunderlich Securities, said shareholders have wanted the spin-off of the challenged magazine business for some time, mainly because the rise of Internet advertising has steadily eroded ad revenue from print publications.
Investors had come to see the magazine business as a drag on revenues and profits. According to the Publishers Information Bureau, U.S. magazine advertising revenue fell 3 percent in 2012 to $21 billion.
“Investors like pure plays and some instances where there are genuine synergies,” he said. “I think they concluded it was a bit of an odd duck.”
The person said …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Can Old Media Beat New Media in Ad War?
Filed under: Technology, Media
The conventional wisdom is that old media online content gets trumped every time by new media properties, at least when it comes to ad revenue. This does not have to be the case, based on the number of people who visit old media websites.
New media, which did not spring from print or broadcast properties, do have an edge as far as total audience is concerned. ComScore reports that in January, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) sites had 186.6 million unique visitors. AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) had 111.3 million. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) sites, mostly MSN, had 169.7 million.
In aggregate, old media online does very well in audience reach. CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) sites had 82.8 million unique visitors in January. Turner, a part of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), had 79.5 million. NBC Universal, part of Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) had 71 million. Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB) had 69.7 million. Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI) had 50 million. Hearst had 43.1 million. The Top 50 sites by U.S audience also included Meredith Corp. (NYSE: MDP), which probably will combine with Time Inc., The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) properties, Fox Digital and The Tribune online properties.
All of this is a long way of showing that old media has extraordinary reach online, and that as traditional media outlets fail to produce the level of revenue they once did, or are no longer growing as quickly, online revenue has a chance to do better for these companies than it does.
The New York Times reported as part of its fourth-quarter results:
Digital advertising revenues as a percentage of total Company advertising revenues were 24.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared with 22.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. For the full year, digital advertising revenues as a percentage of total Company advertising revenues were 23.9 percent in 2012 compared with 22.5 percent in 2011.
Given that the Times had 33.6 million unique visitors online in January, which dwarfs the circulation of the company’s properties, the online revenue production is pathetic. The Times will continue to have to cut editorial staff and production costs to remain financially viable. Digital ad growth is too slow to cover the expense needs of the company.
Time Inc., another firm that produces content among the most well-regarded on the Web, will nearly disappear into Meredith, largely because it could not unlock Internet revenue.
Why is new media in such a struggle with old media companies? There is no one answer. Perhaps management has not put enough pressure on sales staffs to press online ad sales. Perhaps the companies have not been adroit enough to create content online that is of as high a quality as their traditional content. Whatever the reasons, it is not a lack of audience.
Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Internet, Media, Old Media Tagged: AOL, CBS, CMCSA, featured, GCI, MDP, MSFT, NYT, TWX, VIA-B, YHOO