The Washington Post Co.’s first-quarter financials are in, and as before, the numbers are good and bad.
Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO) today reported net income of $66.6 million ($6.87 per share) for its first quarter ended April 3, 2005, up from net income of $59.4 million ($6.15 per share) in the first quarter of last year.
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Revenue for the first quarter of 2005 was $833.9 million, up 10% from $759.0 million in 2004.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that a good-sized chunk of that money is coming from Kaplan, and not the publishing backbone of the company. In fact…
For the first quarter of 2005, Post daily and Sunday circulation declined 3.8% and 3.1%, respectively, compared to the first quarter of 2004. For the three months ended April 3, 2005, average daily circulation at The Post totaled 704,700 and average Sunday circulation totaled 993,000.
Ad sales at Newsweek fell by over twenty percent, and the company’s stock price is off by more than 10% from the beginning of the calendar year. Not great.
At least there’s some good news for WPNI, though, as online revenue is up considerably from last year:
Revenue generated by the Company’s online publishing activities, primarily washingtonpost.com, increased 27% to $17.0 million for the first quarter of 2005, versus $13.4 million for 2004. The increase is largely due to growth in local and national online advertising revenues of 32%, as well as a 24% increase in online classified advertising revenue on washingtonpost.com.
Kick ass. The paper itself has a more thorough write-up.
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