"Moneyball", for those who haven't read the book or seen the movie, refers to the aggressive use of statistics to build a winning baseball team. But "Moneyball" is beginning to take on a broader meaning in the world of business management -- using metrics in a more deliberate fashion to explain financial performance and gain an advantage over one's competitors. What's true in baseball is also true at ALM. I do see an almost daily movement toward gathering and using more sophisticated data to run our business. For example, just in the last 12 months we have invested in an improved web metrics package (Omniture's Site Catalyst) to give us both wide and deep information about the users of our web sites and...
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Negotiations between the state attorneys general and five large banks over a foreclosure processing settlement continue, with meetings having been held this week in Washington. For those interested in keeping up with the twists and turns in these negotiations, this article from the Fox Business website provides the latest information: "State AGs Likely To Go After More Mortgage Servicers"...
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Sorry to say that there's not much new to report on the Public Notice front. The volume of foreclosure notices in Florida, Georgia and elsewhere has been pretty stable for the last several months. The largest bank processor of foreclosures in Florida -- The Bank of America -- has reportedly started to slowly move its case files back into the court system, a sign that they think that they have cleaned up their paperwork problems. But even if that's true, it will take many months for those case files to be processed by the courts, and only then will we start to see an increase in public notice publication in our newspapers. And there's still no sign of a settlement...
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A few weeks ago I noted three questions which could be asked of a CEO in trying to learn more about, and build a relationship with, a company. And then I decided to try and answer those questions for myself. The first two questions were answered in early postings...here was the third question: "What keeps you up at night?" First I'll tell you what doesn't keep me up at night -- our ability to create great content and use that content to create great products. I am more and more convinced of the quality of our content and its value in the marketplace. And I think we have come a very long way in our deployment of new technology...
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Good to see that the banks and the government are talking about potential solutions to the foreclosure mess. Almost any solution to the current stalemate would be good for the economy and, likely, good for ALM. Here's the latest from today's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904292504576484751695296260.html ...
Continue reading ""Bank of America Proposes Loan Forgiveness Deal"" »
Last month I wrote at some length about our public notice publication business, and the impact of a moratorium on filings that began at the end of 2010. I won't repeat the full background...it can be found here. The situation continues substantially as I described it in June. The banks continue to work on cleaning up their paperwork, and negotiations with the Attorneys General of impacted states over a settlement are ongoing. There were reports of an imminent settlement a few weeks ago, including this story from Bloomberg, but nothing official has been announced. Although we tend to see these discussions in financial terms, there are political issues involved as well, and that undoubtedly complicates the discussions. We maintain close contact...
Continue reading "Public Notice Slowdown Continues" »
One of the important lines of business at ALM is the publication of public notice advertisements in our newspapers. It is a big business for us, particularly in our daily newspapers. We work hard at developing the relationships with the law firms and courts that lead to those ads, and are known by the law firms and agents with whom we work for the accuracy of what we publish and the high quality of our customer service. There are many different kinds of public notices, and the ones we publish vary by state. But the two big drivers of our notice business over the last 10 years have been foreclosure notices and business formation/LLC notices. In general, foreclosure notices rise...
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Lately I've been thinking alot about the transformation in ALM's business from an old-fashioned print publisher of newspapers, magazines, books, newsletters, etc., into a digitally-focused media company. We've been moving in that direction for several years, but as I look back at 2010, it seems to me that we may have reached the "tipping point" -- the place where the old business model began to more visibly give way to the new. Here's my list of ways in which ALM is being transformed -- and I'd love it if you could add more. 1. The Re-Invention of the Daily Newspaper -- First observed this past May when The Recorder in San Francisco switched from daily newspaper publication to weekly, with...
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Two years ago I despaired about our Real Estate business. I know it only represents a small part of ALM's overall financial picture -- most of what we do is in the legal publishing world -- but, nonetheless, we had seen some very good years from our friends at Real Estate Media, and I wondered if happy days would ever return again. Well, those happy days may not be here quite yet, but recent results indicate that the worst is probably behind us. For those who have forgotten, REM publishes Real Estate Forum in print, GlobeSt.com online, and produces 10-12 conferences per year under the RealShare brand. It's relentless focus is on commercial real estate, and particularly on building owners, agents, developers, and landlords...
Continue reading "The Real Estate Business: Back on Track" »
For those of us who live in the northern part of the country, this is the time of year when we begin to look hopefully for signs of spring. Last weekend in NY the temperature went over 40 degrees, the snow from the last set of storms began to melt, and it started to feel like the seasons were ready to change. And just this past week I've noticed that it is light out in the evening when I head for home, a sure sign that the days are getting longer and that spring must be around the corner. And yet those of us who long for spring but have lived in this region for awhile know that winter has a habit of...
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I just emailed this note to the staff, but thought I would post it here as well. Feel free to post comments or questions below. Welcome back. I hope you had an enjoyable break for the holidays and took the time to celebrate with your family and friends. As we begin the New Year, I thought a few words about what 2010 looks like from my desk and how we'll proceed would be in order. It has been, as you know, a challenging 15 months at ALM and in the media industry since the downfall of Lehman Brothers and the downturn in both the general economy and, particularly, the markets we serve. Nonetheless, through a great deal of sacrifice...
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The most often asked question that comes my way from staff members is, what's going on with our business? There are certainly indications that the economy as a whole seems to be coming out of recession--we've all watched as Wall Street indicators have turned upward and the banks seem to be doing better. So, what about ALM? Taken as a whole, our business has been relatively flat. Some areas have done well--our newspaper group, for example. Others have seen the declines in the early part of the year slow down but have not yet flattened out--our legal and real estate magazine businesses being two good examples. Public notice revenues remain extremely strong while law firm and classified advertising suffer continuing retrenchment. ...
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Our June financials are now closed, so I can update you on our financial performance through the first half of 2009. As I have been reporting since the beginning of the year, this has certainly been a challenging period for us. On the revenue side, we have seen substantial declines in virtually every revenue category we track, with the only strong gains coming in the Public Notice Advertising arena. Otherwise, during the last three months we saw a continuation and, in some ways, a deepening of the trends we saw during the early part of the year. The biggest areas of concern continue to be Law Firm/Display Advertising, Seminars/Tradeshows and Books. Most of those declines against budget and last year...
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You will by now have seen Tim Weller's email to the full staff at Incisive Media responding to an article that appeared yesterday on the Financial Times' website. Just so we're clear, that article primarily concerned the refinancing of Incisive UK's debt and reported various rumors which may or may not prove to be true. Those negotiations continue and, as Tim's note said, we hope to hear soon that a mutually acceptable deal has been reached. As regards Incisive North America, the refinancing of our debt has been moving along at a good pace. Our team (Allison Hoffman and Eric Lundberg, backed up by their respective staffs and outside counsel, as well as our colleagues at Apax) have been busy...
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As part of my commitment to improve transparency and ensure that everyone in the company knows what and how we are doing, I have been encouraging Incisive staff members to send me comments and questions, whether through this blog or privately. And I'm pleased that some of you have taken me up on the offer. One strain of questioning has concerned the way in which we are reducing our costs and, particularly whether senior management in the company are sharing in those sacrifices. We are. To be specific: 1. Every member of the senior management team is taking a week of furlough, just like everyone else at Incisive North America. That includes me. 2. Every member of the senior management...
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I returned last night from London, where I attended the monthly Incisive Media board meeting. Having shared with my colleagues on the board our performance for the first three months of the year, I want to do the same for you. As we projected would happen back at the start of the year, this has been an extremely challenging few months. We knew that advertising sales would be difficult--and they have been--and that other parts of our business were also vulnerable to the economic downturn. So we determined as the year began to find significant cost savings to offset those likely revenue declines. With your active participation that's exactly what we have done. On the revenue side of the ledger...
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This morning we announced in both New York and Washington our plan to merge the National Law Journal and Legal Times. David Brown, who has done an outstanding job as editor/publisher of LT, will return to NY to become the Editor-in-Chief of the NLJ, building on his prior experiences as an editor at both The Recorder and The American Lawyer. By way of background, this is one of those projects which has been talked about for many years but, for one reason or another, we could never implement. Of all of our publications, the NLJ and Legal Times were the closest we had to internal competitors when ALM was put together in 1997. Both were founded in the late 1970's...
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I have received a lot of comments and private emails from Incisive staff all around North America concerning last week's post about ways in which we might reduce our costs. Thank you! The ideas have been terrific, but even better has been your involvement in the process. Don't stop! Just so you know what the process will be going forward, I'll be using a series of meetings this week and next to go through the lists so we can determine which things to do now and which to table. Some ideas are easier to implement than others, and we'll need to sort those things out as well. But my hope is that by the first week in March I'll be...
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I've been receiving a steady stream of cost-savings ideas from people all over the company, plus a list developed by our department heads. I thought I would share some of those with you, in part because I want everyone to have a voice in what we do, and in part because we are all in this together. Saving isn't just my responsibility or that of our executive team--we all have a stake in working our way through the current economic downturn. While I was visiting our Miami office last week I was asked if and when I intend to announce more layoffs. In fact, that's precisely what I'm trying to avoid--and I hope you are all with me on that....
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A number of people have jumped to the conclusion that there must be some connection between Incisive UK's renegotiation of their debt terms, and our recent staff reduction and expense savings initiatives. The truth is that there is no connection. We need to get our expenses down because all signs point to reduced revenues this year--and it remains critical that we maintain our solid profitability so that we can invest in our future needs while satisfying the requirements of those who have invested in us. Let's put some numbers against that. Last year, Incisive North America's expenses totalled around $147 million. Given expected declines in several of our revenue lines, our expense target in 2009 is about $141 million. That...
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I'm sure by now most of you have seen Tim Weller's note about Incisive's UK business and the renegotiation of its bank debt. A couple of people have asked me what I think the implications are for our North American business. The quick answer is that there are few if any implications for us. Our North American businesses remain profitable--less so than we would like, but certainly enough to pay the interest on the North American debt plus make the kinds of investments we need to make in new technology, for instance. The renegotiation to which Tim's note referred involves only the UK businesses, not us. And given the state of the UK economy, I suspect many media companies over...
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I've been reviewing how the first three weeks of 2009 have been going financially across our businesses. I thought I would share with you what I know so far. We had assumed coming into the year that '09 would be substantially weaker than '08 (which, in turn, finished out about 4% below '07 on the revenue line). And so we set our budgets for '09 at what we thought was a very conservative level, assuming that this will be a difficult year for the US economy. It took us something like 7 rounds of budgeting--one lower than the next--to finally get a budget that made sense. (My thanks to all those in our financial area and our controllers/business managers around...
Continue reading "A Slowwwww Start to the New Year" »
This week has been an incredible roller coaster ride. I started it with attendance at an American Business Media conference in Chicago, where I heard an incredibly smart and provocative presentation by the consultants Booz & Co (more on that in a future post). I also participated in a panel where I managed to get a few laughs and some heads nodding, my usual goals at these things. And, in turn, I heard some good ideas and gained some new insights from others which I could bring back to the office. Not a bad start to the week. But then I got a look at our current forecast for the balance of 2008. As many of you know, we ask...
Continue reading "Highs to Lows" »
This week I spent a few days at Incisive's headquarters in London, and attended our monthly board meeting. Whatever you may think is the state of the US economy, it looks like London is in at least as bad shape. The banks over there have succumbed to the same problems as we've seen here--too many poor performing loans, government bailouts, not enough credit being extended. And lots of concern about what 2009 may bring. Not surprisingly, our board has urged Incisive management on both sides of the Atlantic to approach the coming year with great caution. Because we are all uncertain about what will happen with our revenues, we're being advised to be even more careful about our expenses. That...
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A few weeks ago I reported on our financial results through the end of August. A look at our results through the end of September shows a continued slowdown in several important revenue areas, reflecting both the general slowdown in the economy and, perhaps, the psychological downturn caused by Wall Street's turbulence. Overall, our total revenues for the nine months ending September 30th are now 10.1% behind budget, a bit worse than we saw last month. All of the trends which we saw for the first eight months of the year remain in force. As before, the Legal Notice and Book businesses both remain above budget (+8.5% and +6.0%, respectively), while other revenue areas struggle. Display/B2B advertising weakened a little...
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Having spent the last week reviewing our 2009 budgets, here are some observations that I thought you might find helpful. 1. All of our business leaders seems to recognize that next year will be a challenge, and are keeping their revenue growth goals at a very modest level. Unlike past years, where I have found myself trying to convince people to set higher goals, this year I find myself concerned about whether the goals being set are too high given the state of the economy and its uncertain impact on the markets we serve. 2. Keeping revenue growth goals more modest means keeping expenses very tight so we can protect our bottom-line. And since some cost increases are largely out...
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In my very first blog posting about Transparency, I noted that one of my goals with this blog is to share our financial results so everyone on the staff has a clearer picture of how we are doing. As I do this, I’ll be comparing our results to our budget. Although some might prefer comparisons to last year, or to an updated forecast, I think keeping track of where we are against budget is still the most important measure of how we are doing. Our budget represents a commitment we’ve made to our investors. It’s our way of saying, “if you invest in our business here are the results that we expect to achieve”. Because we need our investors to...
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This has been a confusing and nervous-making week in the financial markets. Trying to figure out what it all means, and particularly what it all means in the markets we serve, is a difficult task. One of law.com's bloggers--Bruce MacEwen who writes the Adam Smith Esq. blog--just put up a fascinating analysis about what's happening on Wall Street, how it may effect the law firm community, and what the law firms should be doing. I like his sixth point--"ramp up your competitive efforts". True for the law firms and true for us. Here's a link to Bruce's blog: http://www.bmacewen.com/blog/...
Continue reading "What's Going On" »
I was in London last week to attend the Incisive board meeting. Thought it might be helpful if I share how our cousins in the UK are doing. As we're seeing in the US, the economic news is a bit gloomy in London, with the financial sector suffering in much the same way that ours is, particularly in the mortgage arena. Not surprisingly, Incisive's mortgage publications and events have taken a hit from that downturn, and it's fair to say that they don't yet see the light at the end of that particular tunnel. Recruitment advertising across many sectors is also hurting, as financial services firms, law firms and others tighten their belts and cut back on hiring. That decline...
Continue reading "From the Other Side of the Pond" »
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