As indicated by the typical company data, the demand for print newspaper and print advertising has been declining significantly in the past several years. The reduced demand has shifted partially to the corresponding digital platforms of those companies and, to larger extent, to other type of medias.

Sector’s Current, Trend, Causes behind trend, and Future

Current and Trend

• 1. The continuingly shifting of readers from traditional print newspaper to other digital forms of news sources seems to be accelerating in the past several years as indicated by large decline in print newspaper circulation volume.

• 2. Decline in circulation volume, while partially offset by increasing price, dragged down revenue of companies. Circulation/subscription of digital contents has increased but more slowly than the decline in that of print newspaper.

• 3. The demand for print advertising has been significantly decreasing in the past several years as indicated by the averaged decrease in same store print advertising revenue.

• 4. The demand for digital advertising has gone up but more slowly than the decline in that for print advertising.

• 5. Commercial printing revenue increased is due to companies’ looking for using their extra capacities to earn revenue and printing costs in the whole industry has thus gone down.

• 6. Facing tough industry climate, companies have reacted by consolidating and shifting business focus to digital content to adapt this trend and by saving costs to keep margins.

Causes behind the trend

1. Increasing availability and lower/free costs of accessing news and information and changes in reading habits of reader should be the reasons behind readers’ shifting away from traditional media.

2. Competition is obviously more intensive in digital content providers than traditional print newspaper industry. Therefore, the reduced readers’ time on print newspaper are largely diluted by more competitors/websites.

3. Because the shifted readership did not all go to the corresponding digital platforms of those traditional media companies and because advertisers have more options/platforms in reaching consumers, the lost advertising in print newspaper of those companies is not completely offset by the increase in their digital platforms.

Industry Future

1. There are going to be increasing difficulties for current newspaper companies to adapt changes in in this industry.

General Financial Performance of Companies In the Sector

It seems that the demand for print advertising of companies in this sector has been significantly decreasing in the past several years as indicated by the averaged decrease in same store print advertising revenue (average 12-19% annually in 2016-2018). While digital advertising revenue has increased, the average 3-4% growth in digital advertising revenue of companies in this sector has been far from enough to offset the declining revenue in their print advertising. The total advertising revenue has thus decreased by about annual 7-13% in the past three years. With the decline in their subscription/circulation revenue (4-6% annually- included increase in digital circulation), we still see an average annual decline of 4-6% in total revenue of those companies including impact of acquisitions).

Declining revenue has put huge pressure on companies’ margins. However, benefiting from costs cutting in employee compensation and improved margin in print circulation as a result of lower printing costs and increased price, companies improved slightly their operating margin while shrinking revenue from circulation and advertising. The averaged operating is about 5.5% in 2018 up from about 5% of 2015.

The typical enterprise price/EBI is 22 (11-35).

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