Tag Archives: TheStreet.com
TheStreet.com strikes content deal with Metro Daily
by Chris Roush
Metro, a free daily newspaper in New York, said Tuesday that it has entered into a content partnership with financial media company TheStreet Inc.
An Associated Press story states, “The partnership calls for TheStreet’s personal finance, markets and business news content to be integrated with Metro’s local business content in print and online.
“Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
“Metro said that the agreement expands its offerings and enables its properties to use their news teams more effectively with a particular focus on local news. TheStreet CEO Daryl Otto said Metro would make TheStreet’s content to a broader audience.
“Shares of TheStreet were unchanged in Tuesday trading at $2.17.”
Read more here.
Biz media talk out of both sides of mouth with Lowe’s, Home Depot
by Chris Roush
TheStreet.com media critic Marek Fuchs takes on the business journalists who used lower earnings from hardware store chain Lowe’s as evidence of a slowing economy, but then found other reasons as to why rival Home Depot beat expectations.
TheStreet.com posts loss, but revenue rises
by Chris Roush
The financial website TheStreet.com reported Wednesday a net loss of $1.7 million in the second quarter while delivering its highest revenue total in nearly three years.
Michael Baron of TheStreet.com writes, “The New York-based online financial news provider on Wednesday reported revenue of $15.1 million from its ongoing businesses in the latest quarter, as both subscription and advertising revenue increased. In the same period a year earlier, the company lost $340,000 on revenue of $14.7 million.
“On an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) basis, TheStreet earned $700,000 in the latest three months, down slightly from equivalent earnings of $900,000 in the year-ago period.
“‘While the growth rates we experienced in the first quarter moderated as the level of uncertainty in the global financial markets increased and advertisers and investors became more cautious — particularly as the quarter progressed — we nonetheless saw a number of key proof points which confirm to us that the Company’s strategy is gaining traction,’ said Daryl Otte, the company’s CEO, in a press release. ‘Notably, revenue in both our ongoing businesses continued to grow and in total represented the highest it has been in eleven quarters.’
“TheStreet said average monthly unique visitors to its network of sites jumped 33% year over year in the second quarter, according to internal measurements, and that its average number of paid subscriptions totaled 93,125 in the second quarter, a 3.8% increase from year-ago levels.”
Read more here.
Investment newsletters and how they manipulate comparisons
by Chris Roush
In his column from Saturday, the Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Zweig smacks a few news organizations for bogus reporting of their stock-picking performance — including The Street.com and MarketWatch.com.
The criticism is interesting because The Journal and Marketwatch are both owned by News Corp. The trick many are playing is tracking their stock-picking performance including dividends against an index such as the S&P 500 without including dividends in the performance of the index.
Zweig writes, “Consider The Proactive Fund Investor, an online service edited by Bill Donoghue and distributed by MarketWatch, which, like The Wall Street Journal, is published by Dow Jones & Co. The newsletter recently compared its ‘total return’ to that of the S&P 500—without counting the dividends on the index.
“‘We don’t make a practice of promoting the performance of [our] newsletters,’ says MarketWatch editor-in-chief David Callaway, ‘because it inevitably leads to questions of accuracy.’
“To approximate Mr. Cramer’s return, you would have had to make an average of 774 trades annually over the past three years, Mr. Barton said.
“Meanwhile, you could have bought and held an S&P 500 index fund and then done utterly nothing except reinvest your dividends. And you, too, would have more than doubled the market’s return — calculated without dividends.”
Read more here. My take: The newsletters make a lot of money for their parent companies, but their touting hurts the credibility of business journalists at the same companies.
Rapping Gap coverage on the knuckles
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TheStreet.com media critic Marek Fuchs thinks that some business media were too soft in their coverage of retailer Gap cutting its earnings projections.
Cramer is the big bang of financial blogging
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Barry Ritholtz, commenting on the New York Times Magazine piece about CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer, notes that a lot of business journalists owe their careers to him because of his co-founding of TheStreet.com.
Ritholtz writes, “You may not know this, but TheStreet.com was a factory that churned out award winning journalists and market beating fund managers like Hershey’s kisses. Josh Brown, once likened TheStreet.com to the ‘Motown Records of the Financial Web.’ They were the farm team for the world of financial reporting, where the media bigs came to look for the next hire.
“The number of people who came out of TSCM to become household names in financial reporting and asset management is quite astonishing: TheStreet.com alumni include Aaron Task (Yahoo Finance), Jesse Eisinger (WSJ/ProPublica) who just won a Pulitzer, Herb Greenberg (CNBC), James Altucher (FT/WSJ), Justin Lahart (WSJ), Paul Kedrosky (Bloomberg), Adam Lashinsky (Fortune), Alex Berenson (NYT), Simon Constable (WSJ), Dave Kansas (WSJ), Gail Griffin, (Barrons), John Edwards (WSJ) David Gaffen (WSJ), Lauuren LaCapra (Reuters), Colin Barr (Fortune), Tim Arango (NYT), Dagen McDowell (Fox), David Reilly (Bloomber/WSJ), Peter Eavis (WSJ). Fund managers like Doug Kass, Whitney Tilson, David Merkel, Jeff Matthews, Helene Meisler, Jon Markman, Todd Harrison, and the list goes on and on. I myself am a proud TSCM alumnus.
“I have on occasion criticized Jim for some position or another he has taken on sub-prime or housing or the Fed, but that comes with the territory. As much as people bash Cramer, consider this: He is the guy who first conceived of Democratizing financial research and reportage. Whatever money he made for clients as a hedge fund manager is far outweighed by his contribution to you, the modern investor.”
Read more here.
TheStreet.com CEO discusses 1Q results, touts journalism standards
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Daryl Otte, the CEO of TheStreet.com, talked on a conference call about the financial news site’s first quarter financial results.
The company reported revenue of $14.1 million in the quarter, up 7 percent from the same quarter in 2010. There was a net loss of $2.6 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2010.
Otte stated, “Our strategic plan is designed to build long-term profitable growth and value on the proven and profitable business model inherent in critical media. We are applying this model against our key assets, which are TheStreet’s strong market position and brands in the finance circle, our robust editorial content and our strong advertising and subscription monetization skills.
“We are focused on generating original, top quality, timely content and monetizing the consumption of that content with diverse and robust revenue stream. We create a large volume of content, over 3,000 original articles and 500 videos a month, produced at high journalistic standards with deep domain experience and overlaid with strong publishing skills.
“We also offer an increasingly growing suite of data tool abilities and notably, just this week on our new iPad app. All of this content is produced by our professional in-house editorial team and through a select group of hand-chosen practicing professionals. This content, because of its quality and relevance, affect highly engaged users. Excellent, educated professionals have come to our content for a purpose. These users attract both endemic advertisers in the financial category and non-endemic advertisers that are attracted to the demographic characteristics of our audience and the high level of engagement they have with our sites.”
Read the entire transcript here.
TheStreet.com CEO: Customers will pay for content
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Brandon Gutman of Forbes.com interviewed TheStreet.com CEO Daryl Otte, who spoke about the financial news site’s strategy to boost readers and revenue.
Here is an excerpt:
Why is TheStreet becoming more successful at attracting advertisers beyond financial services?
Our users are affluent, educated professionals, and they are deeply engaged in the content we produce — be it an article, a video, an interactive graphic or one of our many data and analytical tools. These folks want to make, spend and save money, so they are keenly receptive to advertising that helps them act on these desires. Our research shows that if the message is right, our users are as receptive to the advertising as they are to the editorial content.
What can we expect to see from TheStreet in 2011?
We’re building on our vertical orientation with an enhanced iPad application and a syndication strategy that puts our content in front of users on all the screens in their lives and at other media partners with similar audiences, like the Journal Register Company. We are also upgrading our premium service offerings, having already introduced two new services, OptionsProfits and ETF Profits. On the strength of those launches, we are happy to announce that we will be officially rolling out modernized versions of our flagship services Real Money and Real Money Pro in the near future, which will aim to give subscribers access to a host of action-oriented trade ideas and news from a complexion of industry voices including investing guru Doug Kass, all coupled with some really interesting social media functionality.
Read more here.
Rebuilding TheStreet
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Matthew Flamm of Crain’s New York writes Sunday about the overhaul at TheStreet.com, which includes de-emphasizing co-founder Jim Cramer and changing its name to simply TheStreet.
Flamm writes, “In the past year, under CEO Daryl Otte, it has also downsized Mr. Cramer’s presence on its home page and removed him from the chairman’s seat—moves aimed at showcasing a new editorial team and making TheStreet less reliant on its biggest star. Mr. Cramer has long been both an asset and a liability, since investors worry about what TheStreet would be without him.
“But as the company works through a revamp that began with Mr. Otte’s appointment in May 2009, it is holding tight to one part of its heritage: It relies on advertising for only one-third of its revenues and draws the rest from subscriptions.
“With nearly 91,000 subscribers — most of whom were converted to TheStreet’s premium sites from the free flagship, and who now pay $300 to $5,000 a year — the company can boast that it has long been ahead of its time. Sites that rely solely on advertising have been struggling in an increasingly competitive online market.
“Now Mr. Otte is focused on setting up the media company for growth after two straight years of losses.”
Read more here.
Biz media fails to provide Icahn context
by Chris Roush
TheStreet.com media critic Marek Fuchs comments about how the business media doesn’t mention corporate raider Carl Icahn’s mixed record of investing in companies.