Tegna Inc (TGNA) 2008 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day everyone. Welcome to Gannett 2008 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. Due to the large number of callers we will limit you to one question or comment. We greatly appreciate your cooperation and courtesy. Our speakers today will be Mr. Craig Dubow, Chairman, President and CEO; and Gracia Martore, Executive Vice President and CFO.

At this time I would like to turn the call over the to Gracia Martore.

Thanks, good morning. Again, welcome to our conference call and webcast to review Gannett's third quarter 2008 results. Hopefully you've had a chance to review our press release from earlier this morning. It also can be found at www.gannett.com.

With me today are Craig Dubow, Chairman, President and CEO; and Jeff Hines, Director of Investor Relations. Our goal today is to help you understand how we are moving forward at Gannett, even as the financial crisis and its impact on the economy continue to put pressure on the demand for advertising. Craig will begin by discussing our transformation in light of the current economic environment. He will provide a brief overview of our quarterly results as well. I will provide more detail including a look at our segments and particularly our new digital segment. Because of our acquisition of Shop Local and a controlling interest in Career Builder and the resulting consolidation of their results, we have established this new segment. Craig.

Thanks. Good morning all. Given what has been happening on wall street for the past several weeks I probably don't need to point out the global financial crisis and health of the economy have influenced our results this quarter. Advertising demand in particular has been profoundly impacted both here and in the UK. I will discuss that in a minute.

But all of this turmoil also gives me an opportunity to share four key thoughts about Gannett. First I believe all of this makes it clearer than ever just how much our industry has been in the throws of a downturn that is more cyclical than secular. Next, I want to remind you that Gannett has faced cyclical downturns before and we have a proven ability to manage through them. That hasn't changed. Also, I will stress my confidence that once this downturn cycles through, our core revenues will rebound and together, with that improvement in the core, we will see continued growth in digital. Finally, most importantly, I want to talk about the plan that we have for growing revenues when the economy returns. This plan already is helping us confront the very secular changes in our industry and is setting stage for us to grow our digital revenues as every opportunity arises.

First, to the cyclical effects. As you know, the economy's problems are rooted in housing, and we have been a leading indicator of the downturn there. Weak real estate undermining the local economies in many markets we serve. Consumer confidence fell, retail spending was curtailed and unemployment rose. Demand for all ad categories waned, but the critical real estate, retail and employment were stung the most profoundly. In fact many of the states are which ones which we have a significant presence in either publishing or broadcasting or both. California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida among others. Managing through these downturns is something that we do very well. We have done it a number of times in the last generation. So we understand the cyclical dynamics.

But this time, we have approached our efforts somewhat differently because we understand there are secular forces at work that need to be addressed. Our goal has been to bring expenses in line with revenues as always while at the same time being focused on the future. This is centralizations, outsourcing, insourcing, and an emphasis on protecting content and sales, we are transforming the way we work. This has meant a huge cultural shift for us but it is happening and continues to be an area of strong focus for us. We need e to be ready because we have always bounced up from the bottom. We will again, when this economy returns. When we do, our strategic plan is in place and our Company will be lean and ready to move very quickly.

Now, let me talk about the plan for just a second. It is all about enhancing our core business while growing the digital products or advertisers and consumers want. Creating desirable and relevant content is what Gannett does. And that is the heart of the plan. The numerous efforts are underway to better align our current content, production with customer and advertiser demand. We continued to refine our efforts to deliver that content across multiple platforms 24/7. At the time, we are aligning our sales efforts to deliver the right audience to advertisers regardless of platforms. We know this works. Pulling in an audience and monetizing that audience is occurring more frequently as we deliver digital as well as print solutions for our local, small to medium sized accounts. In some places we have achieved record audience levels.

Our digital strategy is moving forward on many fronts. This focuses on growing, partnering, afilliating or acquiring digital businesses, finding audiences, and delivering solutions for advertisers. On one hand, we have built out the infrastructure. Among other steps we created the quadrant one ad network and rolled out ADTECH our internal add serving program. ADTECH has provided greater insight into our audience analytics, for both the local and national audience. We already are getting some lift if this and expect more in the coming year. In July, we made a minority investment in [Moguless], an internet video platform. [Moguless] compliments Gannett's already robust multimedia infrastructure bid adding the capabilities of its broadcast studio in a box to journal is for information gathering tool kits. Using [Moguless] technology our publishing units have made news throughout the political campaign by airing video interviews with candidates. We also use [Moguless] to break local events, ranging from high school football games to incoming hurricanes.

Let me explain just a little about the significant of the Shop Local acquisition. It was an opportunity that Gannett was uniquely positioned to capture because of our ownership of Point Roll. Shop local's relationship with a majority of the nation's top retailers when combined with point rolls ability to create rich, interactive digital circulars means that we have an end to end solution for retailers, not to mention a richer shopping environment for consumers. Importantly, Shop Local is already turned profitable.

The other trajectory of our digital strategy is to grow niche web sites that use our deep well of content and expertise to find new local audiences but can be national plays for advertisers. We rebranded our very popular mom sites during this quarter, to momslikeme.com, and rolled out nationally with more than 80 sites including all of the top 30 metro areas. The metro mix entertainment vertical has expanded and is now in 28 cities. Football season saw highschoolsports. net which has access to audiences in over 40% of high schools in this country, up almost 1 million unique visitors from August to September. Now, we are working at leveraging our content on the military through military times papers and help through the nursing spectrum into these types of local to national plays.

That is the overview of where we are and where we are going despite the upheaval in the credit markets the equity markets and the economy in general. Underlying it all is the not insignificant fact that we are a solid business with a very good balance sheet, strong margins, and strong cash flow. Having that frequent cash flow means that we can continue to strategically invest and grow in our future.

Now, turning to the results for the quarter, reported earnings per share were $0.69. They would have been $0.76 per share except for about $23 million in severance expenses. Our total operating revenues were $11.64 billion. Total expenses including severance expenses from the efficiencies I mentioned declined about 2.2% to $1.38 billion, however, pro forma expenses, excluding the severance were down 5.3%. Operating cash flow was about $324 million for the quarter.

Looking at the segments, it is clear there was no escaping the impact of this economy. Our publishing segment continued to be pressured from the decline in advertising demand, rooted in the housing downturn and spreading to retail and employment. Broadcasting supply to bright spot as we capture the revenue we expected from the Olympics and political. Olympic advertising for the quarter totaled about $24 million and achieved our expectations given the weakness of the economy. Our folks in broadcasting did a great job taking advantages of ratings and adding revenues through their local sales efforts. Political advertising came in at about $26 million for the quarter, and continues to grow as we get closer to the elections. Significant growth was achieved by almost all of our stations, although the biggest drivers were Cleveland, Denver, Minneapolis, St. Louis, our main stations, Washington D. C., and Tampa. We are on pace to meet our projections as our footprint lines up well with some key states in the presidential election. Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. We also aligned with some of the most contested senate races in Minnesota, North Carolina, Georgia, Maine, and Colorado. Looking to the fourth quarter, based on our current outlook we expect television revenues to be up in the low single digits. Pacings are volatile in the election season and the economy will only add to that volatility.

Now let's add to our digital segment. Online revenues overall in the impact of the consolidation of Career Builder and Shop Local. The digital segment now includes the results for Point Roll, Planet Discover, and Schedule Star, which is the parent company of highschoolsports.net and Shop Local, for the full quarter. It also includes one month of Career Builder's results. These latter two are the primary drivers of the increase in the segments revenues. Total revenues for the digital segment were almost $78 million. Operating cash flow just over $10 million reflects positive results from Career Builder, Shop Local and Point Roll. These positives were offset somewhat by our continued investment in Schedule Star and interdigital infrastructure.

Looking at career builder's results a little more closely, let's first begin with the North American network revenue, which is what we have Career Builder and we have shared with you you in the past. This represents the combination of total revenues generated by Career Builder from its sales efforts, which represent about 75% of the total, plus total revenues generated by the Career Builder of news papers made up of affiliated owners Gannett, Tribune and [Maclatchy]. These revenues were approximately $189 million, down about 5% from 2007's third quarter. The decline is primarily due to the economic climate and the downturn in employment advertising at the affiliated network of news papers. Career builders owned directly sourced or generated revenue on the other hand, maintained a positive momentum and was up about 10% compared to the third quarter of 2007. We believe that reflects in part that Career Builder continues to take share domestically. Network traffic for the quarter was up about 1% from a year ago to 22.7 million visitors. Further, Career Builder continues to expand internationally, and now operates websites in 15 countries outside of the US.

For consolidation purposes we included Career Builder network revenues less those revenues from Career Builder already accounted for in our and other companies publishing segments. Pro forma assuming Career Builder had been consolidated for 2007 and for the first nine months of 2008, revenues rose 14% for quarter and 18% year-to-date.

In addition to the revenues from businesses and our digital segment, some of our online revenues still are derived locally and are included in the results of the publishing and broadcasting. So total online revenue company wide including the digital segment grew about 7% for the quarter on a pro forma basis and was about $177 million on a reported basis of 49% increase. US community publishing online revenues were pressured by the economies on classified advertising, but strong growth was achieved in other areas. The automotive category was up 20% while the national category advanced 31%, and local was about 13% higher. However, the real estate and employment categories were down 24% and 25% respectively. Roughly 75% of our online revenue in the quarter was non upsell business. Overall, online revenues and US community publishing were about 7% lower.

Broadcasting, online revenues increased about 15% and Newsquest was up about 10% in pounds. But in terms of audience, sites domestically garnered a total of 25.4 million unique visitors in September, about 15.6% of the internet audience while Newsquest audience totaled 6.5 million unique visitors with about 86 million page impressions.

Now I will turn the call over, but just a word about our response to the wall street funding crisis. It was a challenge, but our people did an amazing job and we funded ourself successfully throughout this entire ordeal. With that, let me turn the call over to Gracia.

Thanks, Craig. Before we go into detail on our quarterly results I need to remind you that our conference call and webcast today may include forward-looking statements and our actual results may differ. Factors that might cause them to differ are outlined in our SEC filings. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures and we have provided a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the press release and on the investor relations portion of our website.

This morning I will provide some detail on our segments particularly our digital segment. As Craig mentioned, the consolidation of Career Builder and Shop Local had an impact on several items on the income statement. I will cover those changes. I will also discuss the impact severance expenses had on each of the segments and finally I will summarize our debt picture and what transpired during the quarter.

Now quickly moving through our segments, as Craig mentioned, the publishing segment was severely impacted by the weakening economic situation, and the pressure has, that has put on advertisers and consumers. Pro forma advertising revenues were 17.6% lower in the quarter, reflecting declines of 14.9% in the US and 23.6% in the UK. Looking at the categories, retail was down about 10%, national almost 8% lower, and classified down about 29%. Retail advertising was challenging during the quarter here in US. Across all of our products in retail, the department store furniture and telecom categories drove most of the decline. However, financial was positive in the quarter. Online advertising and retail was up significantly, as Craig mentioned. Lower national advertising in the quarter was down primarily reflecting softer ad demand at USA today. The advocacy category was particularly strong in the category and the financial, home and billing categories also were positive. Declines in some of the major categories, entertainment, travel, auto and technology, however, more than offset those gains.

Moving to classified advertising, US community publishing classified advertising was down about 27% in the quarter. It trended down slightly over the course of the quarter driven by softer employment advertising. Auto was down about 19%, employment almost 37%, and real estate declined over 33%. Again, as Craig noted, Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada have had much larger declines in classified advertising, relative to the rest of our markets. And that continued again in the third quarter. Properties in those states produced about 23% of add revenues in the US community publishing, yet they drove 36% of the ad revenue decline.

The UK economy took a big step down at the end of the first quarter, and the economy there is suffering from the same issues if not a little worse than we are in the US. That is reflected in classified advertising at that Newsquest which trended down in the quarter due primarily to real estate and employment. Some anecdotes regarding the situation in the UK include the fact that mortgage lending fell to its lowest point in 3.5 years during September. The number of people out of work in the UK rose materially in the three months to August., the biggest rise in 17 years. And as reported this morning, Britain's economy shrunk in the third quarter by 0.5%.

Craig covered our broadcasting business in some detail, so I will now turn to digital. With the creation of the digital segment, hopefully it will help you understand a bit more about several of our digital businesses. The timing of the transactions has complicated the picture for this quarter, so let me go through the various pieces for you. Career builder, Shop Local, Point Roll, Planet Discover and Schedule Star are now in that segment. We acquired our partners ownership stakes in Shop Local on June 30th, the first day of the third quarter. We began consolidated Shop Local at that point so their results are included in digital segment for the entire quarter. We acquired an additional 10% of careerbuilder on September 3rd, bringing our ownership to 50.8%. We began consolidating careerbuilder at that date, so their results are included in the digital segment for roughly the last month of the quarter. Before this consolidation, our equity share in the results of these two companies was reported in equity earnings. Therefore, the line item equity income or losses from unconsolidated investees includes roughly two months of our equity share of career builder's results and no longer includes Shop Local as it did last year.

Also due to the consolidation we now have a minority interest expense related to Career Builder, that part of it that we don't own that is in other nonoperating items. Obviously next quarters results will present a much clearer picture, as digital will contain a full quarter of both of their results. Revenue in the digital segment was about $78 million this quarter. Expenses were roughly $71 million and operating cash flow was over $10 million. On a pro forma basis, assuming we owned Career Builder and Shop Local for the entire third quarter in 2008, digital revenue would have been in range of $175 million to $185 million operating cash flow would have been in the $20 million to $25 million range.

One other item related to the consolidation of Career Builder and Shop Local in the new digital segment. These businesses have significant variances month to month, not only from a revenue perspective but also from an expense perspective. At the same time, they have become as you can see a much larger piece of our revenues. This will clearly make month to month revenue reporting somewhat more volatile and not necessarily correlate to the expense picture quarter to quarter. Therefore, for the time being, we will be eliminating our monthly revenue and statistical reports. We will, however, update you on our revenue picture toward the end of each quarter, to help you understand directionally where revenues are and help you fine tune your models.

With that, I want to turn to another factor that had an impact on our results for the quarter. Our expense efforts and specifically the severance expenses related to those efforts. As you saw, total severance expense was $23 million for the quarter and impacted primarily the publishing segment. As you may know, during the quarter we had over 1,000 FTE reductions in the US community publishing group. The full impact of the expense reduction associated with these FTEs will be realized in this quarter, the fourth quarter. So as you could see, total reported operating were down 2.2%. However on a pro forma basis and excluding severance expenses, they were actually 5.3% lower. Operating expenses purely in the publishing segment fell 6.6% on a reported basis and 7.1% on a pro forma basis excluding severance. The declines reflect our efficiency efforts and lower news print expense. News print expense was 3.4% lower. Usage prices were up significantly, almost 16%, although that was offset by a decline in consumption of almost 17%.

Let me quickly update you on news print. After three quarters of unprecedented price moves by producers, the market appears poised to challenge the sustainability of continued increases. Cost pressures used by producers to justify aggressive price increases have eased considerably in recent months. A stronger US dollar has significantly improved revenues for Canadian producers, energy costs continue to decline, and pricing for old news paper used to manufacture recycled news print has fallen 17%. These cost advantages for producers combined with lower consumption and rising inventories have weakened market fundamentals for higher prices. In fact a sizable price variance has developed between east and west. And despite plans by eastern producers to raise prices in the fourth quarter, western producers decided against an October implementation. These developments leave producer plans to raise prices yet again in the fourth quarter clearly in question.

Jumping back to segment expenses and turning to broadcast, their expenses in the quarter were 4.3% lower and were about 6% lower excluding severance. Corporate were over 19% lower in the quarter, primarily reflecting compensation accrual adjustments. The last item I want to cover, before I discuss our current debt structure is fittingly interest expense. It was almost 26% lower in the quarter, and totaled $46.8 million compared to $63 million in the third quarter last year. The decline was due to both lower interest rates and debt balances.

Moving to our debt structure, as many of you are aware, we have traditionally been a significant user of commercial paper, around $2 billion in June and July. When the credit market seized up in September and early October, the commercial paper market essentially froze and became at best an overnight market. We continued to fund ourselves with commercial paper despite the market conditions, although at very unattractive rates. In mid September, we partially drew down on our committed revolving credit facilities to reduce dependent on very short term CP. Given continued market dislocation and the somewhat tenuous situation with the federal bailout plan, as a prudent liquidity measure we drew an additional $1.2 billion on the revolver. That brought the total to about $1.9 billion, funds sufficient to repay all of our outstanding commercial paper obligations. We paid down some of our commercial paper immediately, and invested roughly $830 million to pay down the balance as it matured. At this point, there's approximately $203 million in commercial paper outstanding, and we have a similar amount in investments to cover those maturities. The bulk of commercial paper still outstanding will mature by the end of this month with the rest roughly $25 million maturing during November and December.

So, at this point, in addition to commercial paper, amounts drawn under the facilities and the $280 million bank facility, we have publish debt of about $1.75 billion. Total debt is about $4.1 billion our actual net debt excluding investments set aside to repay commercial paper is about $3.9 billion. Our all in cost of debt is about 5% at the moment. We expect we will have about $3.8 billion in debt outstanding at the end of the fourth quarter.

A few of you asked about our revolving credit facilities. We have now received commitments from our banks to substitute a debt to EBITDA coverage ratio in place of the existing minimum shareholders equity covenant. We will close on that amendment next week.

A couple of other balance sheet items before we go to questions. Capital expenditures totaled approximately $45 million for the quarter, and $103 million year-to-date. One note here as well. With the consolidation of Career Builder, we will now account for 100% of their capital expenditures in our numbers. So Career Builder will add about $13 million to CapEx through year end. Career Builder as you know funds its own capital expenditures. This is not a cash out lay by Gannett. We expect capital expenditures for the year including Career Builder to be in the range of $160 million to $170 million. With respect to shares outstanding, shares at the end of the quarter and basic quarterly average were both 227.9 million.

Now, we'll stop and Craig and I would be happy to take your questions.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). We will go first to David Clark of Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. Good morning. Can you talk about your preprint trends for US papers? What portion of US retail business is coming from preprint? Has it been better than the overall retail trend? Thanks.

David, on the preprint side, looking at our units, US community side, preprints were down about 10% in the third quarter. So a little bit better than the overall trend in retail. As I recall, preprints are about 16% of add revenues in the community publishing area.

Okay. Thanks.

All right. We will take our next question from Edward Atorino of Benchmark.

Hi. Two questions. I presume most of the severance was in the SG&A line which was up about, what was it looks like it was up about $13 million from last year?

Yeah, let me go through that.

And second question, if you could go over well let's do that one first.

Okay. There were about $20 million of buy outs actually in cost of goods sold, and about $3 million in SG&A. What actually drove SG&A this quarter was the inclusion of Career Builder, Shop Local and Schedule Star who's expenses are primarily Selling and G&A expenses. If you look at reported SG&A expenses, they were up about $14 million to $15 million.

Right.

However, if you look at them on an adjusted basis taking out buy outs and the new properties actually SG&A expenses would have been down over 7%.

So on the year to year fourth quarter, last year reported was $315 million. We should crank that up, I guess.

Yeah.

For the fourth quarter this year.

You will actually have to crank it up for remember that number I just gave you only included one month of Career Builder.

Right.

So you have to crank it up. Jeff can give you some guidance on that.

Where is the revenue, has is revenue offset somewhere?

Yes. In our digital segment.

Okay. Got you.

In the digital segment.

Okay. And I had another question. Well, I forgot what it was. Let's move on. I will get back to you.

Thanks, Ed.

All right. We will go next to Alexia Quadrani with JPMorgan.

Thank you. Can you give us some color on the print side of what you did see in September and how October is trending so far also including what you are seeing in USA today?

You know, the overall trends are continuing very much similar to what we have seen. There has not been much change, particularly from the community publishing side. On the USA today, I think Gracia outlined what the key categories were and where we have been again. That is predominantly in similar position to we are with have been at this time.

And Newsquest, I mean I guess where are you in terms of strategic thinking, I mean that business has suffered for some time and clearly the UK economy is going to for some time to come. Is it still a core property for you guys going forward?

You know, Alexia, we have been very proud of what the Newsquest folks have done for us for a number of years. And we are very, very aware of the impacts that have occurred because of the economy. Our belief in this is that at a point in time here, that will pass and we have restructured the businesses in a significant way and have a strong belief that we will see that bounce if you will once we can move past the significance of this economic downturn. They are a bit behind us. It is quite clear when you look at it, maybe six to nine months in what we are seeing that has already occurred here in the US. We are most hopeful that the bounce will come once we move past this.

And I apologize if I missed this earlier Craig, but did you give us your expectations for political spending in broadcasting in Q4?

We are pretty much right on target if not even a little better at this point from what we are seeing. There has been I think a significance coming in from the senate side. I had listed the states for you. And as well there is even more being ramped up here from the presidential side. And again those states we listed as well. Do you have the total roughly? But we are ahead just to put it directly to you. Alexia, and we are very pleased with what has been developed in those key markets.

We had budgeted right around $50 million for the fourth quarter, and at this point, currently we are are probably at about 10% ahead of that. But you know it is pretty volatile and you never know from day-to-day who is going to add spending, subtract spending from any particular state. So that is kind of a fluid number at this moment. It would be good to point out when we look at what we are achieving in last half of 2008, it will exceed what we achieved certainly in 2004, and also may achieve what we were able to do in 2006 as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from John Janedis of Wachovia.

Hi. Thank you. Looking at your pacings, I know that they're a snapshot in time but up low singles in a political year is a little weaker than I would have expected. Can you give us on how weak autos look and maybe more detail on other categories and what they're telling you for either 4Q or '09?

Yes. Thanks, John. Overall, as we have been saying, that the critical areas particularly in automotive, it has been a double digit decrease and that has been fairly consistent across the quarter. Package goods have also been down in a similar range, along with telecommunications. So, as we have been suggesting through the quarter, those core key areas, have had a significant down side. And then, obviously that is being offset in a very, very significant way through the political and also from the Olympic spending that did occur.

Would those three together be somewhere in like the 40% range of where more of the category, in terms of the business?

I think with auto.

Between auto, retail, your packaged goods, telecommunications, yes.

Thank you very much.

Thank, John.

Next question?

All right. We will go to the next question. That will be from Craig Huber of Barclay's Capital.

A few questions. The first one, your tax rate I noticed was quite low at 26.5%, healthy by 5% to 6%. Why was that, catch up or what was it for?

What it was, Craig was some very favorable tax settlements in some state issues. Also, we are benefiting a little bit from the lower statutory tax rate in the UK. It was 30% last year. It is 28% this year. Now looking at the fourth quarter, we are anticipating that the tax rate may stay in about that range because there are also some other state tax issues that may settle in late this month that would be favorable to the tax rate as well.

Okay. And then also, your nonnews print cash costs percentage change in the quarter what was that, please for the news paper division obviously.

For the news paper division.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we have been looking at it on a -- do you have that? We will pull that out for you and come right back. Let's see. Publishing excluding news print excluding severance in the third quarter was down about close to 8%.

Okay. And then also you mentioned that debt covenants being replaced.

One debt covenant is all we have.

Yeah. You get (inaudible) replace with debt to EBITDA ratio it says.

Yes.

Can you share with us what that test is going to be?

Sure.

And I would also like to ask are you going have to pay a higher spread over LIBOR in order to make this change to your bank debt.

With regard to the covenant, it is a senior debt to EBITDA of 3.5 times, and a total debt to EBITDA of 4 time covenant. Given that these facilities have historically been unfunded facilities and now they have become funded facilities, the spreads, we have increased the spreads for the banks to level that is are a little bit higher than the $280 million term loan we put in place I think it was earlier this year. So, in that kind of hundred to 150 kind of range over LIBOR.

Okay. And then lastly, if I can,.

Rating.

Okay. Then also if you get rid of I guess temporarily the monthly statistical press release on your operations. You guys have been put that thing out for like at least since 1990, the monthly stat report. I understand your explanation given the monthly volatility with digital, but if you thought much about maybe putting it out each month and not including the digital revenue so people can see how the news papers and TV stations are operating? The worry out there of course is given the cyclical pressures and the secular pressures that eliminate this monthly report, which is great information for your shareholders, many of which have been with you guys for years and years is like the very worst time you can possibly pull it for these people. Am I right?

First of you will I think there's a mixed bag in our industry already. Some of our peer group companies publish them and some don't already. Secondly, if we were not to include.

But you guys are better than them though.

Secondly, if we were not to include the digital revenues, that, that potentially is 15% or 16% of our revenues that you would have no insight into. So, I think that as I said, we will provide guidance toward the end of the quarter vis-a-vis directionally where these numbers are going. We will give you some category details. So I don't think you will suffer from having the appropriate information. I am just not sure what the benefit is given that some do, some don't of having it on a monthly basis and particularly in the digital side there's no one else out there that is providing monthly numbers particularly in the Career Builder situation. So I think we are very comfortable that the amount of guidance we are going to give folks toward the end of each quarter will be certainly sufficient to help you understand what the revenue picture looks like.

I'm not trying to be derogatory here by any stretch but just given how much pressure is on your revenues and Times and (inaudible), this is the single time in your hues you should be given information to investors to make more informed decisions and bond holders et. I will make an apology you guys don't stop printing a news paper when the news is really bad. Why is this being stopped now you have been doing this for well over 15 years.

First of all you are making an assumption we are stopping it because the news is bad. That's not why we are stopping it temporarily, we are stopping it because we don't believe providing this information on a monthly basis is significantly more helpful than simply projecting it on a quarterly basis. We are not running our company on a month to month basis. We are running our company on a more intermediate to long term basis. Think we look at the trends, we will provide you with good information every quarter and that will hopefully be ample for all of you understand the direction the business is going in.

I appreciate that. I am just responding to the questions and concerns that I am getting in my e-mail box the last 45 minutes. I hope you would reconsider as time goes on.

We are doing it, temporary suspending it. At a point we may reinstitute it, but I think we'll continue to give the guidance that our investors and bond holders need. Thanks Craig.

Very good. Thanks for answering all of the questions.

All right. We will go to our next question from Katrina [Faylin] of Citi.

Thanks for taking the question. Just looking at the balance sheet, it looks like you have about $750 million in floating rates, floating rate that is are due in May of '09. What are your plans with that? And particularly do you have discussions around the dividend and have you been buying back stock? What are your plans for stock buy backs throughout the rest of the year?

With regard to the $750 million, all due in May, we have more than the ample capacity revolving credit facilities to fund that maturity. Then as you probably see in our maturity profile we have no maturities in 2010. I think asked a question regarding the dividend. Given the current credit crisis and the economic backdrop as with all companies in the United States, emerge out of the capital allocations, we have discussed it. We will continue to discuss it with the Board. We are going to weigh it against having flexibility within our balance sheet, while at the same time doing the right thing by our shareholders. When you look at the share price, we are clearly not being paid for that dividend at this point. Your third question was --

About share buy back.

We did not do any share buy backs in the third quarter I think on the earnings call last quarter, we indicated that given the credit crisis and the economic backdrop we would be focused on two things, number one was to continue to do good strategic acquisitions I think we demonstrated that with the 10% of Career Builder as well as the equity of Shop Local and in the short to intermediate term we will be focused on paying down debt.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Next to welcome of Michael Kupinski of Noble Financial.

Thanks. Just wanted to weigh in again with what John just mentioned in terms of the monthly stats. I think it would in this environment something you should strongly consider continuing. In terms of following up on the question on buying back stock I was just wondering if you really felt that Gannett is going to continue to manage through this financial turmoil and you feel confident this is a more of a cyclical rather than a secular issue and that you have debt levels comfortable to manage through this situation why wouldn't you buy back stock more aggressively given the current prices? And that you know, theoretically then coming out of this recovery you can see a stronger rebound in the stock price. What are your thoughts about the current stock price and certainly any confidence into your more I would say more optimistic view of coming into a recovery buying back stock would indicate that. What are your thoughts on buy backs going forward?

First where we are, we do belove that once with we are through all of this back and review history we can look at what has been. We also suggest that the bounce has been as strong as where we were previously and hence why we are forcing so much effort right now into the digital side. We do feel very positive about that. You can see we go back three years ago and you can begin to see the opportunities developing as we go forward here. We have got to get through this cycle. We know that there are secular pressures as well and we just believe that these key categories, when you look at the impact, specifically from real estate. When you look at all the associated categories, furniture, home improvement and auto all relate and at some point in time, they will come back so all of that is what we are putting together. And certainly as we are talking here now with the consolidation of Career Builder, the excitement we have with that and certainly with our combination now of all of Shop Local and Point Roll combined, we're very pleased despite all of the surroundings, we've got a profit right now in that new business. And, frankly we're looking forward on that.

Grace, you want to just talk further on the buy back? I mean, we have stopped that temporarily and let's just talk it through.

Given the uncertain economic times and uncertain credit markets even though we are in good shape vis-a-vis that. These are uncertain times and the short term being focused on having that balance sheet flexibility to do the acquisitions like a Career Builder, like a Shop Local is strategically very important and we're continuing to build that capacity. It is also a very prudent measure given where the economy is right now. We haven't ruled share repurchases out forever. I think what we have just simply said is in the short term we need to focus on these two aspects until we get more clarity on the economy as well as the credit markets.

And just to follow up on a previous question on the dividend, is that on the table in terms of cutting the dividend you are not getting credit for it in the marketplace today.

As we said we talk with our Board on a regular basis about capital allocation. We will meet with them next week and again in December. Our dividend, share repurchase, debt, balance sheet will all be topics of discussion.

If I could just beg one more question, some time ago you obviously had some initiatives to increase the number of publication and so forth. Certainly as you emerge from this, you hope to be a stronger competitor have you noticed that other niche publications in your markets are kind of falling off at this point? Are you, do you think that you're becoming more competitive in the marketplace that your, in other words just kind of looking forward here, are you seeing some of these niche publications kind of falling by the wayside and in your view are you going to continue with our niche publications or are you going to retrench and in other words, what are your plans for some of these publications?

Michael, frankly it is a great question, and when you take a look and we have talked a lot about our aggregated selling, and when you talk about the overall market reach that we have, on a 75% plus within the markets when you combine our core plus our nondaily and then our online as well now as mobile platforms, we have tremendous reach within those markets, and what we are trying to do is fine tune those so that we can deliver the best in content to the customer in ways that they want. As we have said over and over again we will taylor that if there are areas that we see that will work better by the demand, we will put more of those out, we will contract in the event that we see things that don't work as well. But all in all, the real opportunity is we see it right now is when you look at the total reach on a penetration of market by our portfolio of products, we are, we are very pleased with where that is going, and most importantly, how that is serving the consumer because all of this ties back. We want to know exactly what their desires are and we will deliver it for them. That's what we are seeing right now.

And there's a lot of distressed properties out there. What is your appetite for picking up a few assets here and there?

Michael we don't change our position on anything. First I think it is obvious we are looking at, at digital and where that strategically can apply, I think when you step back and look at the numbers and really what has been developed here through the Shop Local, through Career Builder, and our other acquisitions. Certainly, the organic growth of momslikeme. We have lots of direction there, and if there is a strategic fit that would be the first priority. Obviously, if there are other areas that would fall in the broadcast area that might make good duopoly sense, yes we would look at the core and certainly within publishing, the same thing if they're good consolidation opportunities, printing consolidation and other synergistic thing that is will apply. If if there are other properties that come up in a different situation, again if the economics are right, price is right, certainly we will consider them. We know how to operate exam consolidation within these marks and feel comfortable with that.

Would you get in another medium like radio for instance or would you just stick to broadcasting and news papers?

I think at this point, as we always do, we would be open to look into anything but we want to stay in these kind of volatile times and within these markets to what is it we do best and that is quite clear in how we can run these operations and certainly, the expansion into the digital platforms as we see it.

Thanks, Mike. I think we have time for two more single questions.

All right. We will go next to Peter Salkowski of Goldman Sachs.

Good morning everybody.

Hey.

I was hoping you can help us on the digital front in terms of sort expectations of actually down in the equity, what impact it has on the income line and other line how those get pulled out on a going forward basis.

In the equity line as you saw, Peter, it was down about $9.6 million year-over-year. There's a couple of things that impact there. One is we have our California news paper partnership, Texas New Mexico and as you know, the California news paper partnership would be. We know what's going on in the California market. That clearly had a significant impact on the line. Also in there is our joint venture interest in MetroMix and we have obviously been in a ramp up mode on MetroMix. So there are investment dollars for MetroMix. Those will obviously continue into the fourth quarter. Also, in that equity line is two months of Career Builder instead of the normal three. So next quarter, Career Builder will no longer be in that line, and then finally, with all of those pieces I think what you might see is the equity line be in that range year-over-year or even slightly higher loss as a result over the fact that Career Builder will not be in that line next quarter.

So should we expect that line to basically go negative in the fourth quarter given Career Builder coming out of there?

I don't think it will go negative but I think it will be a greater variance quarter-over-quarter.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We will go next to Matthew Miller of Invesco.

Thanks. I was wondering if you can give a feel for cash outflows we might expect for restructuring expenses for the next couple of years. A comment was made that the full impact will be felt in fourth quarter. I just want to confirm that's a, that you are speaking of the full impact in terms of reduction of cost and not the in terms of new severance. To follow on that line, you know, if I look at a ten year [kegger] of the company it is about 8.6%, and operating cash flow has grown to 4.3%. Why would you look to continue to increase capital employees in the business via acquisitions opposed to distributing it to shareholders.

Let me start with the first part of your question. With regard to yes I was referring to the fact that the full benefit of the 1000 plus FTE reduction that we took in the third quarter we will not get the full benefit of that expense reduction until the fourth quarter. However, I think given where economic conditions are and as Craig as indicated previously, we will be looking at additional FTE reductions in the fourth quarter certainly on the publishing side here on the corporate side, and in other divisions. So, we don't have our arms fully around yet, what the magnitude of those severance expenses will be. We are in the planning process right now and looking out to 2009. So, when we do, we will try to report on that for you, give you a better sense of it when we are up on Wall Street in early December.

With regard to your question related to additional acquisitions, in our core businesses, I think clearly as Craig has said, we would only entertain those kinds of acquisitions where it was clear that we could cluster them and make significant expense reductions at -- on those properties at a time when prices are obviously significantly depressed. So, those would be very unique situations, but I think you will see more likely a continuation of the kind of thing that is we did this quarter with the acquisition of the additional controlling interest in Career Builder, the acquisition of Shop Local where up until the acquisition we and our partners were investing in Shop Local. We knew that when we combined Shop Local with Point Roll there would number one be tremendous expense synergies available as well as terrific new revenue opportunities as Craig eluded to in his remarks and frankly we are very quickly out of the box seeing that and Shop Local has turned to a positive contributor here in the third quarter from a couple of years of investment that all of us had. All of us had.

Thank you. I may have missed a net debt number. Would you mind give tag number out?

Yes. I think we set the net debt was about $3.9 billion. We expect it to be $3.8 billion at the end of the year.

Thank you.

Thank you. I think we appreciate your being and joining us on this call and if you have any additional questions, please feel free to call Jeff Hines at 703-854-6917 or me at 6918. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.