Here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is! PRIMEDIA Announces Intention to Sell Enthusiast Media Segment - Board of Directors Decides to Explore Sale as Alternative to Spin-Off - NEW YORK, NY (February 9, 2007) PRIMEDIA Inc. (NYSE: PRM) today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the Company to explore the sale of its Enthusiast Media segment (PEM). PRIMEDIA has retained Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers to manage this process. PEM is the number one special interest media company in the U.S. with over 70 publications, 90 leading websites and over 65 events, with revenues of over $500 million in 2006, excluding the recently divested Outdoors Group. Some of PEMs best known assets include Motor Trend, Automobile, Hot Rod, Automotive.com, Power and Motoryacht and Surfer. Dean Nelson, Chairman, President and CEO of PRIMEDIA, said, The Board believes the market environment is extremely favorable for the sale of PEM. We have spent considerable time reviewing strategic options for the Company and have been exploring, at the Boards direction, a possible spin off of our Consumer Source division, creating two distinct publicly traded companies. We have received a favorable IRS ruling and virtually completed complying with the Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. Therefore, spinning off the Consumer Source business remains an option. However, given the multiples PRIMEDIA received from the sale of the Outdoors Group and the particularly strong investment and debt markets, the Board believes the best course of action for PRIMEDIA shareholders is exploring the complete sale of PEM, Mr. Nelson said. In addition, we are seeing positive results from our online and product investments, which we believe will be valued by potential acquirers. We believe there will be strong appetite for our leading brands. Mr. Nelson added, The Company will apply the proceeds from the sale to pay down debt.
I want to buy Motoryacht magazine and make it about homebuilt ,lowbuck yachts like it used to be before they started catering to the goldchainers.All the content is full of is what the advertisers want you to read.That just not right they should bring back yachting to the little guy. It sounds just as goofy when people say it about car magazine also.Yes they've lost touch with most of us but I for one don't spend a lot of money with their advertisers so I guess I'm to small time to really matter.
i say they sellem in chunks and then they actully would have to compete for adverts and readers in sted of being on big homogenious blob
Damn, I wanted to fire that JimA guy, but they already beat me to it. Guess I will have to keep my money undert he mattress a little longer. Just kidding Jim, you were a good influence on for your time there.
Yes, and that was going to be part of my answer when I might eventually be hit up to do some advertising and my answer might be" "How could I feel secure spending my money with a magazine not stable enough to keep me on the staff?". That magazine will survive- too much history behind it and the people there now are doing a good job respecting that.
I think JimA should just do his own mag! Don't you guys agree?? Or does he know somethin' he isn't telling us? Come on Jim - we KNOW you would do it right...............
Hey now, speak for yourself. My magazine is doing just fine, thank you very much. If Primedia hadn't put so much money into Gr8ride.com back a few years ago they might still have something.
It was an early version of what Todd Horne (ex-Primedia) ended up accomplishing with tenmagazines.com. Basically turned into another casualty of the internet bubble of the late '90s. All of the magazines were lumped onto one big site, and we all of a sudden had twice as much work to do, including "chat sessions" with readers. haha
to read their hype , you would think that it is the greatest investment in the world for any potential buyer let's look at it a lttle closer: "today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the Company to explore the sale of its Enthusiast Media segment (PEM). PRIMEDIA has retained Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers to manage this process." that means board members , large shareholders are looking to dump their stock for a fat profit..and goldman sachs will get a nice fat commission and/or fees "with revenues of over $500 million in 2006" sounds impressive...where is the P & L statement? "We have spent considerable time reviewing strategic options for the Company and have been exploring, at the Board’s direction, a possible spin off of our Consumer Source division, creating two distinct publicly traded companies." if they don't find a sucker , i mean buyer , they will split if off into another seperate company..and do an IPO to sell the stock. either way , goldman sachs get some nice fees , and existing stockholders sell and clean up big time, company officers get a nice bonus “In addition, we are seeing positive results from our online and product investments, which we believe will be valued by potential acquirers. We believe there will be strong appetite for our leading brands.” Mr. Nelson added, “The Company will apply the proceeds from the sale to pay down debt.” they are not making any money..it's all smoke and mirrors fellas ...if it was making money they could use any profits to pay down debt. you keep the cash cows , sell the turkeys i wonder what the CEO , CFO , COO make for salary and bonuses ?
I noticed recently when I went to buy a simple toothbrush I had about 100 choices to choose from. The magazine section for cars looks the same way. Restorers, muscle cars, Mustangs, Chevys, Mopars, street rods, you name it and its out there for sale. The market for autosport publications is just too diversified to support some niches (50s customs for example with the recent demise of PRIMEDIA's Custom Rodder.) My car magazine collection goes all the way back to the very first issue of Rod & Custom (actually the premier issue was Rods & Custom 1953). As recently as 4 years ago R&C was 170 pages. It dropped to 106 in 2006. Robert Petersen was a savvy guy. He knew when to sell out. If the sale goes through this will be the third time the magazines started by Petersen have been sold in less than 10 years. Things have sure changed since I picked up that copy of Car Craft with Duane Steck's Moonglow 54 Chevy on the cover at the local drug store at the tender age of 16 in January 1957.
Kind of like GM. They had Oldsmobile for 100 years and fucked it up. They said it would be cheaper for them to drop the brand. After all, they already had other divisions with Minivans, SUVs and mid sized cars. To make their internal groups happy they gave Saturn a minivan, an SUV, and a mid sized car...how much money did that save? When Primonster bought them all up, they should have combined the resources and killed some names. Why did they wait all of these years to do Custom Rodder? It would have been easier to merge with R&C after day 1. Why do they continue to publish Classic Trucks and Custom/Classic Trucks? Each month is a rehash of the other mag. Kill Classic Trucks or Truckin or whatever it is and leave CCT to rule. They've done it to themselves out of pure greed and I've dropped all but the R&C sub when I used to have Car Crap, Snot Rod, CCT and CT as well. The physical printing quality sucks with ink runs and poor print runs coming on a monthly basis. They'll let anything out and then when there is a car that the writer (JimA and others) goes into detail about the details of the tail lights or the dash, the pictures aren't there because they've got to cram in yet another advertisement! I just get them for the Norwell, Blackie, and Jimmy spreads...
I could through that together in an afternoon. Money well spent. Reports say Primedia is 1.3 Billion in debt. So it was a little more than 1 half ass website.
It is a Primedia shares shell game. Yes they might be thinking about selling their magazines off to save their biggest money maker, Apartment finders, realistate flyers ect... Which they did split off a little while back and lost there ass on. The first day of the company split the shares went down roughly 45%/ But, it is also a last ditch ploy for investors. With the talk of possible sale to such giants like Time Warner ect.. People are more willing to invest now at low and have greatly increased stock shares in a larger company when it is sold. Primedia's stock has risen in the past few days and I believe it is an effort to get investors before their 2006 report comes out at the end of the month. Also I hope all the employees are doing alright over there like Ramblux, It is always a scary time when your company is up for sale.
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