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Could Reuters Go Private?

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Stocks:  (RTRSY)(DJ)(NYT)(MS)(TRB)

There has been a good deal of speculation lately that The New York Times or Dow Jones could go private. Former AIG chief, Hank Greenberg, may be vying to buy NYT outright. The rumors are apparently not true, but other investors like Morgan Stanley are pushing for a deal to "unlock" shareholder value.

The Tribune Company is being picked over by private equity firms, and Dutch media company VNU has already been sold to private interests for 7.5 billion euros.

Well, what about Reuters? It is at the end of a restructuring. Its stock has moved up in the last two years, but not any more than the S&P 500. Last year, Reuters had operating income of $378 million on revenue of $4.3 billion. And, operating income is 3.4x interest due on debt.

Reuters has a market capitalization of about $12 billion. SunGard Data, a firm with several businesses like Reuters’, went private last year for $11.4 billion.

If private equity loves tech and media so much, it kind of makes one wonder.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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