Savings on the way for Torstar

Article Excerpt

TORSTAR $6.20 (Toronto symbol TS.B; Shares outstanding: 79.9 million; Market cap: $505.7 million; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 8.5%; www.torstar.com) lost $70.8 million, or $0.89 a share, in the three months ended September 30, 2013. The uncertain economy continues to hurt print advertising sales, particularly in the automotive, real estate and retail categories. As a result, the company wrote down its newspaper operations’ goodwill and other intangible assets by $85.5 million. A year earlier, Torstar earned $11.1 million, or $0.14 a share. If you disregard all unusual items, the company would have earned $0.21 a share, up 5.0% from $0.20 a year earlier. Revenue fell 7.6%, to $310.4 million from $335.8 million. Torstar continues to lay off workers and outsource certain editorial functions, such as laying out printed pages. These moves should cut the company’s annual costs by $27.1 million. It expects to realize $14.7 million of these savings in 2013. The company plans to keep paying quarterly dividends…