It’s the newsprint?

Yesterday I wrote a short post about the fact Canadian newspapers are in a stronger position than many in the U.S and laid out a couple of reason why I thought that might be. Seems I missed one.

This morning, the Globe & Mail is reporting on the latest quarterly results for Canwest, the Canadian media juggernaut, and in there I found this:

The publishing unit, whose titles include The National Post and dailies in 10 major cities across Canada, reported $59.4-million in EBITDA on revenue of $306-million in the quarter, CanWest said. This was up from $52.4-million on revenue of $302.6-million, with the gain came mostly from a 15 per cent decline in newsprint costs.

If my math is right, the revenue increase was on the order of one per cent, and the EBITDA was up about 13 per cent.

According to this article, newsprint prices have been rising (and are expected to continue to do so). Does this mean that Canwest’s 15 per cent decline in newsprint costs is based on their use of newsprint — redesigned, narrow pages and fewer pages?

Note: The G&M also reported this:

The [Canwest] stock fell in early trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange Friday, dropping 12 cents to $4.63 in the first half-hour. That is down from more than $11 a year ago.

A lot of that appears to be due to Canwest’s non-newspaper operations.

Tags: business, canada, newspapers