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Gemstar (GMST) In Pieces: Dump TV Guide

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Gemstar-TV Guide (GMST) says that is may put itself up for sale. As would be expected, shares jumped 17% after hours to $6.27. That would put it well above its 52-week high and up over 100% for the year.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWS) owns 41% of the company, so he may be in for a nice pay day.

The question about Gemstar is whether it is a good business. Revenue in Q1 was up from $144 million to $157 million. The company’s technology unit which sells electronic channel guides to set-top box, cable, and satellite companies does very well. In the first quarter, it had EBITDA of $54 million on revenue of $75 million. The company’s ad sales unit also did well, with EBITDA of $9 million on $48 million revenue.

But, the company’s publishing business is awful. In Q1, on revenue of $34 million, the unit lost $6 million.

The best way for the company to make shareholders money is probably to get out of the publishing business. The balance of the firm does just fine.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected] 

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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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