Times Mirror Operating Profit Rises 3%

Times Mirror Co., citing advertising gains and lower newsprint costs, said Wednesday that its third-quarter profit from continuing operations edged up 3% from a year earlier, excluding restructuring charges and other one-time items in both periods.

The latest earnings equaled 73 cents per diluted share, a 26% jump from 58 cents a year earlier, and exceeded analysts’ consensus estimates of about 69 cents. However, the per-share increase reflected a 26% drop in the average number of Times Mirror common shares outstanding, owing to a recently completed recapitalization of the company.

“We are very pleased with our third-quarter performance,” Mark H. Willes, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Times Mirror, which publishes the Los Angeles Times, said in a statement.

“In light of the improved newsprint and advertising environments, we expect continued strong performance for the rest of the year,” Willes said.

In response, Times Mirror’s stock rose $2.13 a share, to $70.13, in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Times Mirror said earnings from continuing operations, excluding the one-time items, rose to $56.9 million for the three months ended Sept. 30 from $55.2 million a year earlier.

The company’s net income fell to $57.1 million from $1.1 billion a year earlier, which included a $1.1-billion after-tax gain from the divestiture of assets. The company’s third-quarter revenue from continuing lines rose 9% to $739.7 million from $677.1 million.

Besides The Times, Times Mirror publishes Newsday in New York, The Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and other Eastern newspapers. The company also publishes a variety of magazines, and it owns Jeppesen Sanderson, a provider of flight-information services to the airline industry.

The newspaper group posted a 20% gain in third-quarter operating profit, to $102.3 million from $85.2 million (excluding the one-time items). The increase reflected a 12% gain in advertising revenue, including a 7.2% increase at The Times. Times Mirror’s newsprint costs, meanwhile, fell 8.6% in the third quarter compared with a year earlier because of a drop in average newsprint prices.

Its information group, which is now just Jeppesen, also showed a 20% gain in operating profit, again excluding one-time charges. Times Mirror last month announced plans to sell some of its other information-services units--including AchieveGlobal, Allen Communication and StayWell, which are now being treated as discontinued operations.

Their sale was announced last month when Times Mirror also completed a transaction with its largest stockholder, the Chandler family, in which they each contributed stock, cash and other assets to create a new company that will make investments elsewhere. The deal, among other things, reduced the number of Times Mirror shares outstanding, thus helping to increase its per-share earnings and reducing its overall dividend payments.

Times Mirror said its latest results also included a pretax gain of $6.5 million, or 5 cents a share, from its sale of stock in America Online Inc. Times Mirror initially acquired the stake in Netscape Communications, which was acquired by AOL earlier this year.