Big investments hurt Torstar’s earnings

Article Excerpt

TORSTAR CORP. $1.83 (Toronto symbol TS.B; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 80.6 million; Market cap: $147.5 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.2; Dividend yield: 14.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.torstar.com) recently paid $178 million for 56% of Vertical- Scope, a private firm that operates over 600 online forums and a variety of websites. The company has also launched a digital version of The Toronto Star, its flagship newspaper, for tablet computers. It will take a year or so for these new operations to begin contributing to Torstar’s sales. But they should help reduce its reliance on slower advertising revenue at its newspapers. Meantime, in the first quarter of 2016, Torstar’s losses worsened to $53.5 million, or $0.66 a share, from $459,000, or $0.01, a year earlier. Excluding unusual items, it lost $0.40 a share in the quarter, compared to a profit of $0.02. Revenue fell 9.1%, to $174.8 million from $192.3 million. Job cuts and other restructuring actions should…