New York Times Shops Headquarters Building for Loan

Mainstream Media Financial Woes
The New York Hard Times?

NY Times Stock: Grey Bag Lady?

The New York Times is trying to drum up some cash and is shopping its building on Eighth Avenue. It would like to secure a $225 million loan, with the NY Times Tower as collateral.

The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.
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The Times Company owns 58 percent of the 52-story, 1.5 million-square-foot tower on Eighth Avenue, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, and completed last year. The developer Forest City Ratner owns the rest of the building. The Times Company’s portion of the building is not currently mortgaged, and some investors have complained that the company has too much of its capital tied up in that real estate.

Regardless of how decrepit the NY Times (the newspaper) is, the building is pretty snazzy.

“The New York Times Building is a skyscraper on the west side of Midtown Manhattan that was completed in 2007. Its chief tenant is The New York Times Company, publisher of the The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, as well as other regional papers. Construction was a joint venture of The Times Company, Forest City Ratner Companies – the Cleveland-based real estate firm redeveloping the Brooklyn Atlantic rail yards – and ING Real Estate.”

The NYT’s stock price has steadily declined over the past 15 months. Friday, the Times’ stock closed at $7.64. It was over $24 in 2007.

Standard & Poor’s recently lowered its credit rating on the Times Company below investment grade, and Moody’s Investors Service has said it was considering a similar move. Times Company stock, which has lost more than half its value this year, closed on Friday at $7.64, down 30 cents.

The New York Times is the fourth-bestselling newspaper in the New York metro area.

Most businesses would change their product when customers aren’t buying, but the NY Times keeps dishing up a paper filled with an ultra-liberal pap–in spite of the down spiral of their numbers.

One would guess that there’s not much demand for “news” with a decidedly left slant.

by Mondo
image/source: Wikipedia, New York Times Tower

Tags: $225 million, building, collateral, credit, Eighth Avenue, falling, loan, New York Times, price, security, stock, tower