The stock market -- or rather, the thousands of individuals who make up the market -- may do some strange, silly, and outright dumb things from time to time, but eventually they get it right. So when comparing the stock of financial news specialist Dow Jones (NYSE:DJ) to other media operators like Tribune (NYSE:TRB), Gannett (NYSE:GCI), or New York Times (NYSE:NYT), I think it's fairly safe to say that the market has already recognized that Dow Jones has a more durable and potentially lucrative franchise.
First-quarter results seem to reward that belief. True, results and guidance were a little light, but not terribly so. Revenue did increase nearly 10% this quarter, and operating earnings (on an adjusted basis) were up more than 31%.
I believe there's a distinction between doing better and doing less bad, and in Dow's case, I think the latter applies. In the consumer media group, ad revenue growth was quite strong for both TheWall Street Journal and Barron's. But overall, this segment still posted an operating loss due to continuing losses related to the weekend edition of the Journal. Enterprise media had a more balanced performance, with both revenue and operating income growth, while community media saw a modest revenue increase but a fairly substantial earnings drop.
I'll give management a fair bit of credit here. It's figuring out new ways to monetize the content without completely alienating readers. And it also seems to be making progress in reducing corporate expenses. Furthermore, all this is happening amid relatively weak ad trends in some major sectors like technology.
While I'm more of a Financial Times fan than a WSJ guy, I still give this company full marks for having an enormously valuable franchise with a very deep and wide moat. Even with the rise of the Internet and outfits like TheStreet.com and The Motley Fool, Dow Jones has stayed very much in the game. But I find that even when I give Dow Jones the lowest discount rate of any media stock I follow, I still don't come up with a target price that makes me want to subscribe to these shares.
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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).
