AMI Reports Strong Quarter

Against backdrop of a stalled sale, ad and circ gains boost books.

By Dylan Stableford
02/19/2008

American Media Inc., a company whose troubles making financial filing deadlines are well documented, has reported strong earnings for third quarter of fiscal year 2008.

According to AMI's filing late last week, revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2008 was $115 million, as compared to $107 for the same period in 2007—a 7 percent increase. For the nine months ended December 31, 2007, revenues were $368 million, compared to $346 million in the prior year—a 6 percent increase.

The publisher of Star, National Enquirer, Shape and Men’s Fitness attributed the boost to increases in advertising and newsstand revenue. According to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) figures, Shape’s ad pages increased by 13 percent in 2007, Star and Men’s Fitness by 25 percent.

AMI’s reported operating income for the third quarter of fiscal year 2008 was $17 million, compared to a loss of $302 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2007. (For the nine months ended December 31, 2007, operating income was $75 million, as compared to a loss of $275 million in the prior year.) The company also doubled its EBITDA for the third quarter of fiscal year 2008 was $24 million, as compared to $12 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2007. For the nine months ended December 31, 2007, EBITDA was $95 million, as compared to $56 million in the prior year period.

AMI saw a 7 percent decrease in expenses, according to chief financial officer Dean Durbin, who attributed the strong results to cost-reduction and revenue-enhancement goals outlined in AMI’s “management action plan” in February 2007.

The turnaround comes at a particularly interesting time for AMI. In December, a sale of the company to Ron Burkle’s Source Interlink was reportedly imminent, but has stalled in 2008.

Last month, the company swapped CFOs, with Durbin, a former CEO at Vertis Communications and a b-to-b publishing veteran of Thomson and McGraw-Hill, becoming AMI’s sixth CFO in four years.