Gamble of the week: Is there more to come from this newspaper turnaround?

This newspaper publisher has come a long way in two years. So, should you stick with your shares, or is it time to sell? Phil Oakley investigates.

By
published
in Features

In November 2012, I tipped this newspaper stockas a potential recovery play. At 79p each, the company's shares were trading on a forward price-to-earnings (p/e) ratio of just 2.9 times, giving it a market value of just over £200m.

It had debts of £162m and a hole in its pension fund to the tune of £283m. It looked as though the market was pricing the shares for bankruptcy. Yet the firm was still producing lots of cash flow.

It had a new CEO, Simon Fox, who planned to cut costs and get its newspapers on to digital platforms. I thought at the time that if he was able to achieve this, then there was a good chance the cash would keep rolling in.

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Fast forward to today and Fox seems to have done a pretty good job. The share price has soared to 212p and debt is down to £56m. Things have improved so much that it's even going to start paying dividends again. If you bought back in 2012, you should have made some big profits by now. So should you bank them? Or hope for more?

Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) still has a lot of problems. Sales of its key titles the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, the Sunday People and the Daily Record are still falling, as are sales of its regional titles.

On the more positive side, both Mirror titles are growing their share of the print advertising market, and higher cover prices and cost cutting have helped to limit the fall in revenues.

Digital revenues grew by 47% in the first six months of 2014, although these remain a very small part of the overall business. There's more cost-cutting to come, and the price of newsprint has been falling, which should help profits this year.

706_Trinity-Mirror

But I'm not so sure now. The pension funddeficit has remained stubbornlyhigh at £272m and £36m of cash willhave to be ploughed into it for theforeseeable future in order to get itback on an even keel.

During the last year Trinity Mirrorproduced operating profits of £105.6m.Its enterprise value (market value plusdebt and pension-fund deficit) is £876m,giving it an earnings yield of 12%.

If profits can be kept at this level, a casecan be made for saying the shares arestill cheap. But cost-cutting can only goso far, and with newspaper circulationstill falling, maintaining profits is byno means going to be easy.

So if youhave made big gains from this share,you might want to take some money offthe table. It's going to be a lot harder tomake money from here.

Verdict: take profits

Phil Oakley

Phil spent 13 years as an investment analyst for both stockbroking and fund management companies.

 

After graduating with a MSc in International Banking, Economics & Finance from Liverpool Business School in 1996, Phil went to work for BWD Rensburg, a Liverpool based investment manager. In 2001, he joined ABN AMRO as a transport analyst. After a brief spell as a food retail analyst, he spent five years with ABN's very successful UK Smaller Companies team where he covered engineering, transport and support services stocks.

 

In 2007, Phil joined Halbis Capital Management as a European equities analyst. He began writing for MoneyWeek in 2010.

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