By achokshi|MEG|Be the first to comment!
Media General (“MEG”) announced that it reached an agreement for a short-term bridge amendment with its lending group on Friday, February 10. The amendment resets the leverage ratio for Q1 2012 to 7.60x as opposed to the original 7.25x. After Q1, the leverage ratio resumes its original schedule, with Q2′s leverage ratio set at 6.75x [...]
Continue Reading →By achokshi|MEG|Be the first to comment!
Media General (“MEG”) reported Q4 2011 earnings on Thursday, January 26 2012. The company actually performed well relative to expectations but as typical with MEG’s imbecilic management team, was able to steal defeat from the jaws of victory by citing concerns regarding its ability to remain within compliance of its covenants in 2012. As a [...]
Continue Reading →By achokshi|MEG|Be the first to comment!
Media General (“MEG”) faced a difficult 2011, partly due to an off-political cycle year and also due to incompetent management. Management had repeatedly underperformed its own estimates from the very beginning of 2011 and would use the simple excuse of “it’s the economy.” Management also cost investors anywhere from $12-$25MM by missing one of the [...]
Continue Reading →By achokshi|Uncategorized|1 Comment
AT&T’s (“T”) CEO Randall Stephenson pulled in $16MM, $29MM, and $27MM for 2008, 2009, and 2010, respectively while T stock is still down about 30% from its 2008 price level. As AT&T’s CEO he was the main driver behind the company’s attempt to acquire T-Mobile and also approve the $3B break-up fee as well as [...]
Continue Reading →It takes a special type of management team and board to reach new lows for corporate governance when such “benchmarks” of fiduciary duty and competence are established by companies such as Hewlett-Packard (“HPQ”) and MF Global (“MFGLQ.PK”) but the executive team and Board at Talbots (“TLB”) is working hard to exceed those benchmarks. As it [...]
Continue Reading →As a deep value investor, one is always confronted with companies that have potentially great assets but can be overshadowed by poor management. As a deep value investor, often times a great stock is not necessarily a great company but the overall value available from an investment standpoint is too attractive to pass up. Based [...]
Continue Reading →One of the challenges with non-stop economic news/noise is that it can be difficult to focus on the fundamental underpinnings of individual companies. While the broad economic outlook is admittedly poor, some stocks seem to have derisked significantly and carry valuations across a number of metrics that would suggest significant undervaluation. Lexmark International (“LXK”) seems [...]
Continue Reading →By achokshi|MEG|Be the first to comment!
In my last blog post on Media General (“MEG”), I discussed how MEG was undervalued on a sum of the parts basis, particularly given recent transactions in the broadcast television space. At the time, there was one significant comparable transaction whereby E.W. Scripps (“SSP”) paid $212MM to acquire McGraw-Hill’s (“MHP”) television division. However, Sinclair Broadcasting [...]
Continue Reading →Media General reported another difficult quarter on October 19. Once again, management turned in a pathetic top line, mitigating the damage solely by heavy cost cutting. Nonetheless, MEG’s operating results achieved the main goal of avoiding a violation of its Total Debt/LTM covenant, with Total Debt/LTM EBITDA at 6.6x, well below the 8.0x covenant level. [...]
Continue Reading →