It should have been a good week for the New York Times-controlling Sulzberger family after they beat back a cantankerous shareholder, ending a two-year battle over the dual-class share system the company employs to keep the family in control of the newspaper publisher.
But another five days passed and another $220 million in market cap eroded as shares closed Friday at $18.18 – a 10-year low – down 7.8 percent for the five-day period. And that was a good week.
On Tuesday, Wall Street will be keeping one eye on the embattled publisher as it releases its third-quarter results.
The other eye will be focused on the remaining large institutional shareholders – T. Rowe Price and Private Capital Management, which had joined Morgan Stanley money manager Hassan Elmasry in pressing the Times board for changes.
“You have to look at what T. Rowe Price and Private Capital are going to do,” said Porter Bibb, a merchant banker at Media Tech Capital Partners. “Everyone is holding their powder, but if it goes down into the $17 range, you can expect these guys to bail,” he said.
The early word on the Street has analysts bracing for more bad news this Tuesday, although it remains to be seen if it is a raging disaster that is particularly severe for the Times or in line with the poor but anticipated results from some other newspaper companies.
Morgan Stanley began amassing stock in 1996 but sold it last week after failing to convince the Sulzberger family to do away with its dual class of stock.