Tribune Co.'s Fitzsimons: Help-Wanted Coming Back

By: Mark Fitzgerald Tribune Co. will end the year on an upbeat note, with earnings per share increasing by a low double-digit percentage -- powered in part by the comeback of help-wanted advertising, Chairman, President and CEO Dennis J. FitzSimons told stockholders at the media company's annual meeting in Chicago today.

FitzSimons told stockholders that he "shares your disappointment" with the current price of Tribune stock, which has been punished by Wall Street lately following analysts' disappointment with its first-quarter earnings report. FitzSimons said the stock was suffering from an "over-reaction" to expenses he said analysts had been warned about, but chose to discount in their expectations.

With the price down, Tribune has been aggressively repurchasing stock and has bought back more than 6 million shares, FitzSimons said.

Tribune is poised to end the year with about $1.7 billion in operating cash flow, he said. Jack Fuller, president of Tribune Publishing Co., told shareholders that help-wanted classified -- a traditional revenue engine that dropped from a high of $620 million in 2000 to $289 million during the bottom of the recession -- is trending up.

While Tribune in recent months has created a new daily, the free commuter paper AM New York, and expanded its Spanish-language daily Hoy into Chicago and Los Angeles, it has made no significant acquisitions in some time. FitzSimons suggested that it unlikely to change, because "prices are too high to give us the rate of return we look for."

Celebrating 20 years since the media giant was taken public, FitzSimons noted that company debt, which had ballooned to $5 billion in the aftermath of the $8 billion Times Mirror acquisition in 2000, is now down to $1.8 billion. The debt-to-cash ratio is now approximately one-to-one, he noted.

FitzSimons ended his presentation with a pitch for the looser media ownership regulations voted last year by the Federal Communications Commission. The regulations have been put on hold by a federal appeals court in Philadelphia, which is expected to rule on the regulations by early July. "We believe we and the public would be better served by a level playing field that clearly stated rules will provide," FitzSimons said.

Dan Tracy, senior reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, was awarded the company's top journalism award for a series on the widespread construction flaws in new Florida homes. FitzSimons said the series led to "a near-term loss in the real-estate (ad) category," but that he considered that "an investment in credibility."

RedEye General Manager John O'Laughlin and editors Joe Knowles and Jane Hirt were given the "Readership Innovation Award" and three advertising executives from The Sun, in Baltimore -- Lenora Howze, Annie Hager and Deborah Bennett -- were presented with the "Tribune Values Award." Steve Brooks, the Chicago Tribune's regional advertising director, was the winner of the Tribune's top management award.