Uriah Heep is New Incisive CEO

In an extraordinary interview given to The Times, Incisive Media CEO Tim Weller claims he has found his recent debt for equity deal crisis a humbling experience. Humble! In the interview the copy brags about his Aston Martin, his ski chalet and his £11m in the bank.

His erstwhile owners (who still have stake in his business), Apax, are derided by Weller for bringing no operational understanding to his business. We are glad to be shot of private equity, he says.

He claims that the level of debt was never discussed at board meetings! Isn't the Chief Executive responsible for everything? Why didn't Weller put the debt issue on the agenda. If I were running a debt laden business, I doubt I would discuss much else.

Anyway, it's nothing to do with him. Not my fault guv. I paraphrase here, but he says, "Apax showed me one slide that debt was a good thing. It seemed ok to me so I thought no more about it."

Oh come on. Weller was desperate to get off the public market. He personally made a fortune as the business went private. Now the banks have lost their shirt, Apax have lost almost everything (in the Uk business at least), and the ceo says, depsite the fact that he blames PE for all his businesses woes, he'd do a private equity deal again because he got what he wanted out of it. You can almost hear the rush of private equity feet queing up to get some of that action.

I should think there are some lids blowing off the heads of APAX execs.

Meanwhile in another interview with Paid Content, Weller says all is well with the business and he doesn't need to make any more cost cuts oe sell off any assets. Yeah right. I wonder if the banks agree with that. They won't be interested in growth and aggressive expansion. They just want some of their money back.

There are moments when bumptiousness and larger than life straight talking can serve you well, but when you have laid off hundreds of staff, supervised the loss of your shareholders money, and the lenders have taken a big haircut, it's probably a good idea to go to work in the Mondeo rather than bragging about the Aston and the Ski chalet and to exude a bit of genuine humility.

And finally, one article reports that Helen Alexander is to be Chairman. That would be odd. The banks will want the chairman to be on their side, to hold the CEO to account. Helen A did a fantastic job at The Economist, but she is an old mate and admirer of TW's isn't she?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lenders to take control of Incisive (telegraph.co.uk)
• Incisive Media Carved In Two By Private Equity Backers (paidcontent.org)

Centaur Revenues Collapse

Centaur Media's annual results show that revenues dropped by around a third last year. Their preferred profit measure shows a £7m Ebitda, but this drops to £1.7m once amortisation and exceptionals are added back and just 0.9m after tax.

Centaur hopes that revenue will recover but during the downturn, even online revenues have dropped. Staff have been culled but revenue/head is still below £100k which even in the good times is too low to get rich on.

Dividends have been cut refelcting the uncertainty about the rate of the recovery.

Cash is tight - just 0.6m left. Happily, Centuar has a bank facliity and a clean debt free balance sheet but with revenues of just £60m, and not much reecovery expected soon, no really radical thinking and tight cash, expect a drip drip of cost cuts through the year.

PPA research proves all is well in business media land (Sic)

I still haven't seen the PG article but I guess its referring to the PPA sponsored research reported here which claims that the UK business media sector is worth £23b in 2006. The research claims that this is an increase from £15.6b two years earlier - ergo all is well and booming.

Now call me an old cynic but I am not so sure about this. In 2006 the total turnover of the listed business media companies in the UK was £13.3b. I don't have the numbers for 2004, but lets imagine that the rate of growth as in 2004-2006, (as reported in the PPA survey), continues in 2007 and on into 2008. Business media is booming as they say at the PPA.

Based on this assumption what would you think the forecast for 2008 revenue for UK listed business media companies is? If we believe the PPA research and my hypothesis it should be around £20b. What do you think it actually is? I went and looked up the analysts forecasts and the 2008 forecast is - wait for it - £14.4b. Still a healthy annual rate of growth of 4% but rather less bullish than this survey would have you believe.

Why should this "discrepancy" exist? Three theories. First - the survey is sponsored by the media most likely to benefit from saying that all is well in the world and it is therfore optimistic. Second - the methodology of the survey is completly flawed - Third - the survey is broadly accurate but the spend is not going to the traditional business media companies but to somewhere else. Where is the somewhere else? Digital marketing services? Google ads?

Who knows for sure but what we can know is that this research is as illuminating as a spent match in the slough of despond. Or even Slough. We need to do better than this to understand what is really going on in business media. Self serving, unbelievable research will make no difference to business media customers and lulls media owners into a false sense of security.