Another Disastrous Quarter for Martha Stewart

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO) posted another loss on falling revenue, a further sign that the company is not a viable standalone firm.

Revenue for the second calendar quarter of the year fell to $47.9 million from $54.9 million in the same quarter a year ago. The operating loss for the most recent period was $2.9 million compared to $2.5 million last year.

Merchandising remains the firm’s only strong operation. Revenue in the unit rose from $12.9 million last year to $14.5 million. EBITDA rose to $10.3 million from $8.5 million. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s publishing operation is hardly worth keeping. Revenue fell from $34.1 million to $28.8 million. The EBITDA loss for publishing was $4.6 million, compared to $1.6 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Regarding the publishing numbers, the firm reported “The decline was anticipated in part due to the timing of changes in the advertising sales staff.”

So, for the second half, numbers will clearly be much better. Not likely.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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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