Earnings Call Excerpt
Here’s the entire text of the prepared remarks from Tribune’s (ticker: TRB) Q3 2005 conference call. The Q&A is here.
Third Quarter 2005 Earnings
Conference Call
October 13, 2005
Ruthellyn Musil, Sr. Vice-President/Corporate RelationsGood morning, and welcome to Tribune’s conference call to review 2005 third quarter results. Our opening remarks will be brief, we’ll have plenty of time for questions, and expect to finish within the hour.
Our speakers this morning are CEO Dennis FitzSimons, Don Grenesko, senior vice president and chief financial officer and Scott Smith, president of Tribune Publishing.
Turning to our press release, Tribune’s third quarter diluted EPS of 7 cents on a GAAP basis includes a net non-operating loss of 43 cents per share. Our release contains the information needed to make a meaningful comparison to First Call estimates.
Now, before turning the call over to Dennis, a reminder that our discussion may include forward-looking statements that are covered in greater detail in Tribune’s SEC filings.
Dennis...
Dennis FitzSimons, Chairman, President and CEOGood morning.
Our third quarter results reflect the continuing soft ad environment which is impacting both our newspaper and television groups. Our results also reflect our continued focus on expense control. Earnings per share include the impact of the Matthew Bender Tax Court ruling and Don will have some additional detail on that in a minute.
Consolidated operating revenues were down 1%, although advertising revenue in publishing was up 2% over last year, or 3% excluding Newsday. Circulation revenue declines of 7% were slightly better than second quarter, and we project those trends will continue to improve. Scott will talk more about that.
In television, third quarter revenue for our group was down 6%. Improved baseball revenue in New York for Mets telecasts and in Chicago for the Cubs telecasts, partially offset the impact of an overall soft market and People Meter ratings declines.
Our New Orleans stations had no revenue in September as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Both stations were knocked off the air and 121 employees were displaced. Thankfully, none of them suffered serious injury. Our stations did have significant property damage. We are covered for property damage and business interruption through our insurance.
Now despite evacuating its facility, the staff at our New Orleans ABC affiliate, WGNO, provided continuous coverage by working in conjunction with the Baton Rouge ABC affiliate, WBRZ. The combined news staffs were actually working and living out of WBRZ, and our people did a weeklong nonstop job of covering this tragedy.
- Source: TRB website.
- The Q&A from this call is here.
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