RE:RE:RE:Mediawatcher is the man hereI respectively disagree. Knowing that a business has $460 mm of revenue does not tell me much about what it’s worth. If their cash costs are higher than their revenue such that they don’t generate any cash flow and their revenue is declining precipitously every year then that business isn’t worth much if anything.
Again, businesses (with the possible exception of high growth technology companies) are not valued as a multiple of revenue. They’re generally valued on a cash flow basis - maybe the acquirer will assume they can cut costs but they’re not simply looking at revenue - that’s why the income statement doesn’t stop there.
The value in Torstar is not in the legacy, poorly run newspapers. It’s in VerticalScope (assuming they can figure out the Google algorithm), their various minority investments and the cash. If they walked away from the newspapers today we’d all be better off.