Tribune Publishing hosted a brief “investor update” call Tuesday, making more explicit its earlier statements that the Los Angeles Times was under-performing financially and dragging down company-wide results.
The market remains skeptical that Tribune Publishing’s house is in order — shares were down another 5.5 percent for the day at close Tuesday, a decline of more than 22 percent so far this week.
CFO Sandra Martin opened the call saying newly installed publisher Tim Ryan had “recast” revenue and expense predictions for the balance of the year, determining that the revenue forecast was over optimistic and estimates of likely savings were wrong.
Publisher Austin Beutner, fired two weeks ago, was not mentioned by name. However, CEO Jack Griffin said that the decision to replace him with Ryan, who had been publisher of the Baltimore Sun since 2007, was “highly considered” by the company’s board of directors.
Echoing earlier reports by Poynter and the New York Times, Griffin said all publishers were expected “to participate fully in our company’s shared initiatives” — clearly implying Beutner did not. Griffin added that Tribune is making “meaningful progress in many of our markets.”
Griffin did not specify the timing or dimension of cuts coming at the Times, first reported by my colleague James Warren. Nor did he say more about the decision to rebuff Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad’s request to buy the paper and bring it under local control.
Unlike a typical call pegged to quarterly results, management did not take questions from analysts.