Economics

I really enjoyed reading Newsweek when I was younger–I loved the political cartoons, the quick-hit section in the front, the in-depth pieces on issues I knew nothing about.  So I’ve been watching with interest as the Washington Post Company completes the sale of the news magazine for a reported $1 dollar and assumption of debt.  Newsweek–like many print publications–has been losing money for a while, so this is not much of a surprise.

There are a lot of interesting stories going on here:  the ongoing saga of print and online media; Sidney Harmon, of Harmon-Kardon audio fame, is the buyer and has no clear media experience; and Harmon’s wife, Jane, is a U.S. Representative.  But it was the following analysis of the finances of Newsweek that really caught my interest:

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_newsweek_numbers.php

Someone published a copy of the [presumably confidential] sales presentation on the web, and the revenue and cost data is fascinating:  apparently Newsweek spent around $100 million (about 60% of its annual revenue of $160 million) to produce, distribute, and manage the physical magazine.  How can a magazine, any magazine, seriously compete head-to-head with an online publication, one that can provide a similar service while avoiding $100 million in such costs?

This drastically changing industry is a good place to look at changing business and finance models.

I was talking to some friends (and one cab-driver) about electric and hybrid cars the other day, and the concept of range anxiety came up.  Consumers may very well wish to purchase electric cars, but they are apprehensive about getting stranded on long trips:  auto makers call this range anxiety.

I wonder what the average consumer’s range anxiety is (measured in, say, miles), and I wonder how that compares to the capabilities of a typical electric car.  Consumers are assumed to act with lots of information (provided by commercials and marketing, for example), but perception is often far from reality.  There could be a large gap between someone’s range anxiety and the capability of the car–range dissonance, perhaps?  In order to make sales, car manufacturers need to close that gap, through technology or marketing.

There’s a lot of interesting quantitative analysis to be done here, both of the car’s performance, and the consumer’s perception of performance.  In addition, the government–which seems interested in promoting electric car use–must understand the needs of the cars and consumers as well, as it starts to develop the geometry of “filling” stations.

Blockbuster Video will always have a special place in my heart.  When a store opened up a few blocks from my childhood home, it was a big deal.  We were excited to walk over, browse the rows of VHS (and, for a short time, Beta) cassettes, and bring back a movie or two for three days / two nights.

Oh, how times have changed.  Once valued at nearly $5 billion (in 1996 dollars), Blockbuster stock is currently trading at around 17 cents a share, which means that the company is currently valued at around $37 million.

So where is this $37 million in value?  The company has dropped more than 100-fold in value, but $37 million stills seems like a lot of money.  Does Blockbuster have any significant revenue?  Do they have exclusive agreements with movie studios that have value?  Is the Blockbuster brand worth something?  Can they sell all their old VHS tapes to Panama?

Determining the value of a company is an interesting and complicated problem.  Facebook provides another good example of the complexities involved.  Recent reports suggest Facebook has a value between $10 and $20 billion, even though Facebook’s revenue is on the order of $1 billion.  How does one determine that all the non-revenue-related stuff (brand identity, user base, etc) is worth $9 billion?

One thing is for sure:  Netflix, currently valued at around $5 billion, is definitely 133 times more valuable than Blockbuster.  At least.