E.W. Scripps Co. CEO Rich Boehne told shareholders at Thursday’s annual meeting that the company is open to making a one-time distribution to stockholders of some of the proceeds from the sale of its business that licenses the “Peanuts” characters.
Scripps is selling United Media to Iconix Brand Group for $175 million in a deal expected to close soon. It will continue to syndicate “Peanuts,” “Dilbert” and other features.
Scripps has been working to strengthen its balance sheet, and pay down long-term debt that is relatively low compared to many of its publicly traded newspaper publishing peers. At the meeting, CFO Tim Stautberg said another possible use of the proceeds would be to make a payment to its underfunded pension plan.
In an account by senior staff writer Dan Monk on the Web site of the Business Courier of Cincinnati, Boehne is quoted as telling shareholders Scripps has a “high-class problem” with the United Media cash.
“Twelve months ago, we were just very determined to make sure we were in a strong financial position and we’ve done that,” he said. “So, we find ourselves with a very different problem than we had 12 months ago and we’ll talk about all the options.”
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