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Showing posts with label centaur media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label centaur media. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Centaur Pulss up its Briefs
Centaur has announced ite largest aquistion in many years paying £1.9m for taxbriefs. This business was founded back in 1975 - so its hardly an overnight success but does appear to be a reasonable newslette business in a market that Centaur should aim to grow in. Its not a transforming deal as Centaur still has a mountain of problems in developing a long term strategy for its print titles which are old and tired.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sherren Steps Down
Thanks to a reader for noting that Centaur has announced the retirement of Graham Sherren as Chairman of Centaur. He will stay on as a non executive for 12 months. Will this lead to a change in approach and strategy?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Centaur in Play as CIG bid
CIG, the vehicle supposedly created to buy subs based b2b assets which has Peter Balzegette (of Big Brother fame) on its board, has made an offer for Centaur. No surprise that the board has rejected the approach. The share price rose some 15% today. If the offer gets to 60p the shareholders should snap at it - but the board won't want to do a deal as the management is likely to be a casualty in any deal methinks.
Friday, September 18, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Online jobs in Decline as Mags Launch and Close
Good news for RBI owned Total Jobs which has topped the Hitwise rankings for most traffic in the online jobs market, beating Monster et al for the third year running.
Bad news for all of them however as Monster reports a fifth consecutive month of decline in job postings, including a massive 11% fall in December alone.
No surprise I guess that there are more people looking for fewer jobs.
Meanwhile, and arguably more surprising a number of b2b magazine launches announced this week, including Dennis launching a title for the b2b poker industry, whilst Centaur is continuing its process of culling underperforming magazines.
Note also a b2b mag launch in the finance sector, for wealth managers as online solution provider Citywire moves into dead trees for I think the first time. Amazing.
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Bad news for all of them however as Monster reports a fifth consecutive month of decline in job postings, including a massive 11% fall in December alone.
No surprise I guess that there are more people looking for fewer jobs.
Meanwhile, and arguably more surprising a number of b2b magazine launches announced this week, including Dennis launching a title for the b2b poker industry, whilst Centaur is continuing its process of culling underperforming magazines.
Note also a b2b mag launch in the finance sector, for wealth managers as online solution provider Citywire moves into dead trees for I think the first time. Amazing.
Friday, October 10, 2008
The Spin says Centaur is Up. But its really Down
Centaurs results presentation is a curious thing. The spin is profits are stable, lots of development in the pipe and the business is well placed to manage through the cycle. Oddly though, the management has allowed head count to grow since 2005 from 695 t0 785. That must mean that in the next year 50 to 100 jobs will go, to right size the business. (Note to recession managers - keep a lid on your headcount)
Once all the adjustments are stripped away the profit left to be distributed to shareholders has dropped from 12.3m to 9.7m or put another way, a 21% drop. The managements preferred measure of profit (adjusted PBT) is slightly up. Bean counters will argue about this kind of thing but lets stick to the facts.
From the charts in their presentation we can see that revenues were around £74m in 2001. Doing nothing but increasing prices by inflation at 4% a year should mean revenue in 2008 of 97m. It isn't. Its less than that. So the mangagment have bought and sold and launched and closed, but in real terms cut the revenue. Profits over the same period are slightly higher than inflation, but only just, and not after exceptional costs have been removed.
Cash on the balance sheet has fallen this year by more than 25%.
The City understands all this and in part this expains the poor share price performance. Its not all because of the crunch. It won't get any better for Centaur shareholders any time soon without some visionary actions and a robust cost cutting agenda.
We have noted this before in other results presentations. The replacement of believable strategy with spin. Nobody believes that stuff in a downturn. At least you and I don't.
Once all the adjustments are stripped away the profit left to be distributed to shareholders has dropped from 12.3m to 9.7m or put another way, a 21% drop. The managements preferred measure of profit (adjusted PBT) is slightly up. Bean counters will argue about this kind of thing but lets stick to the facts.
From the charts in their presentation we can see that revenues were around £74m in 2001. Doing nothing but increasing prices by inflation at 4% a year should mean revenue in 2008 of 97m. It isn't. Its less than that. So the mangagment have bought and sold and launched and closed, but in real terms cut the revenue. Profits over the same period are slightly higher than inflation, but only just, and not after exceptional costs have been removed.
Cash on the balance sheet has fallen this year by more than 25%.
The City understands all this and in part this expains the poor share price performance. Its not all because of the crunch. It won't get any better for Centaur shareholders any time soon without some visionary actions and a robust cost cutting agenda.
We have noted this before in other results presentations. The replacement of believable strategy with spin. Nobody believes that stuff in a downturn. At least you and I don't.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Less Often with Fewer Staff. The Brave New World.
Centaur announced a couple of weeks back the move of Precision Marketing from fortnightly to monthly "to concentrate on features." This is beginning to look like a familiar strategy. Huge cost savings, (fire some journalists - in this case the Editor himself is leaving - , piggy back the circ with another title -this really works in a postal price system that is size not weight dependent and reduce print costs.)
It used to be true that the most profitable magazines were those that pubished most frequently. It is increasingly obvious that few of the weekly titles will survive the current gloom. Depressing that, whilst no doubt necessary, none of this is about growth. Even the claim that there will more focus on the web is disingenuous when all these strategies involve producing copy with fewer journalists.
No wonder the City has turned against the business media sector. We look bereft of ideas. Lets make a pact to do better.
It used to be true that the most profitable magazines were those that pubished most frequently. It is increasingly obvious that few of the weekly titles will survive the current gloom. Depressing that, whilst no doubt necessary, none of this is about growth. Even the claim that there will more focus on the web is disingenuous when all these strategies involve producing copy with fewer journalists.
No wonder the City has turned against the business media sector. We look bereft of ideas. Lets make a pact to do better.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Centaur Says "Carry on as Normal" despite feeble share price
Centaur issued a trading statement last week which although promising results in line with city expectations, also warns of tougher times ahead. Centaurs share price has taken a terrible hammering in recent months, dropping from a 52 week high of 150 to around 60p. This despite year on year growth in earnings, largely driven by cost savings.
The challenge for Centaur is that their business is heavily advertsing dependent and there has been little aggregate revenue growth in the last four years. As a small stock in market cap terms, there is not much liquidity in the shares and little prospect of the city sentiment turning favourable to media companies in the near future.
Their strategy seems to be, sweat the share on the market leading brands, do more online. Both necessary but by no means sufficient actions to get back on to the front foot. Centaur continues to use the language of the cycle, arguing that lowering the cost base and winning share means it will be well placed for growth when the recovery comes. But what if there is no recovery in magazine advertising? What then?
The challenge for Centaur is that their business is heavily advertsing dependent and there has been little aggregate revenue growth in the last four years. As a small stock in market cap terms, there is not much liquidity in the shares and little prospect of the city sentiment turning favourable to media companies in the near future.
Their strategy seems to be, sweat the share on the market leading brands, do more online. Both necessary but by no means sufficient actions to get back on to the front foot. Centaur continues to use the language of the cycle, arguing that lowering the cost base and winning share means it will be well placed for growth when the recovery comes. But what if there is no recovery in magazine advertising? What then?
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