Annual Shareholders Meeting
May 8, 2003
Remarks by
Donald E. Graham
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I'd like
to begin by talking about what The Post and Newsweek invested in their
coverage of the war in Iraq. By that, I don't mean their financial investment.
Both the newspaper and the magazine recognized for months, as the buildup
for Iraq began, that telling all the truth we could learn about the war
would be one of those challenges by which we are judged for a long time.
Post-Newsweek Stations and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive also committed
substantial resources to covering the war. Altogether, the company had
50 reporters and photographers on the ground in the Middle East.
We were lucky that
each staff possesses remarkable journalists who started off able to provide
a unique perspective for our readers. At the newspaper, Bob Woodward demonstrated
again in his book "Bush at War," and in the newspaper reporting
preceding it, that his mastery of the complexities of Washington is unequaled.
In addition, Tom Ricks,
a Pulitzer Prize-winner who has covered military affairs and diplomacy
for many years - and wrote two books on the subject - is considered the
foremost reporter at the Pentagon. Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus bring
decades of experience to covering diplomacy and the CIA.
Then there were The
Post's reporters on the ground in the theater. To single out a few: Rick
Atkinson, a Post reporter and senior editor since 1983, had left the newspaper
to become a military historian and had recently published "An Army
at Dawn," a history of military operations in West Africa during
World War II, which just won the Pulitzer Prize for history. Rick's work
was greatly admired by career military officers, and he was called up
by the commanding general of the 101st Airborne and asked to go with the
unit to Iraq. Since "An Army at Dawn" was Rick's third great
book, he was completely prepared to bring an understanding of the past
to bear on today's infantrymen, and his reports have been a highlight
of The Post's coverage.
Meanwhile, Moscow
correspondents Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, who had become experienced
military reporters by covering the war in Afghanistan, joined a team of
15 Post reporters, some of whom were embedded with U.S. forces in the
region.
Just before the war
began, The Post was fortunate to hire Anthony Shadid from The Boston Globe.
Anthony is a Lebanese American who speaks fluent Arabic. After intense
consultation with executive editor Len Downie, he remained in Baghdad
to cover the war from the Iraqi perspective. Since Shadid's experience
at The Globe included being shot in the shoulder during fighting in Ramallah,
he knew better than anyone the risks involved. But his courage in choosing
to remain, and his ability to converse with the local population, have
provided uniquely astute reporting.
At Newsweek, the remarkable
Evan Thomas continued to pour out brilliant lead articles on the war.
Melinda Liu, a talented and experienced foreign correspondent, chose to
remain in Baghdad and filed compelling, personal stories from the front
line. A team of reporters headed by Rod Norland in Kuwait and Iraq, followed
the progress of the military coalition. I also want to highlight Newsweek
International editor Fareed Zakaria's remarkable work interpreting the
diplomacy surrounding the war.
Finally, I have to
mention washingtonpost.com's Travis Fox, who produced more than 35 quite
remarkable edited audio, video and photographic reports for washingtonpost.com.
At The Washington
Post Company, every day since the war started was centered around our
concern for the safety of reporters and photographers. We were grieved
when Michael Kelly, an editor of the Atlantic Monthly whose weekly column
appeared in The Post and was syndicated by The Washington Post Writers
Group, died in Iraq on April 4. Michael was a strong believer in the merits
of President Bush's war effort and put his life on the line to tell the
story. The Post was fortunate to have printed his columns ever since former
editorial page editor Meg Greenfield asked him about writing for us six
years ago.
Our pride in the achievements
of all Post, post.com Newsweek, and Post-Newsweek Stations journalists
who covered the war is great. The people of this country - both policymakers
in Washington and the rest of us - need the multiple perspectives that
only experienced and committed reporters around the world can provide.
Never has it been more challenging to provide that perspective. And never
has it seemed more important.
For that reason, we were especially pleased that the work of Post journalists was recognized with three Pulitzer Prizes this year, in addition to the Pulitzer won by Rick Atkinson I mentioned a moment ago. Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, a husband-and-wife team on The Post’s foreign staff, won the international reporting prize for exposing corruption in Mexico’s criminal justice system. Columnist Colby King won the commentary Pulitzer for his pieces on the District’s poorer and most neglected residents. And film critic Stephen Hunter won the Pulitzer for criticism.
Likewise, KPRC, our
television station in Houston, was one of only three local news organizations
to win a Peabody Award, the broadcast industry's equivalent of a Pulitzer.
Reporter Stephen Dean, with photographers Mark Muller and Glenn Garcia,
recounted in a series of reports how the U.S. Army, citing federal law,
refused access to soldiers' DNA in criminal investigations where enlisted
personnel were suspects. The series resulted in the law being changed.
Congratulations also to KPRC's news director Nancy Shafran.
To go on to more mundane
subjects - but these are the appropriate subjects of this meeting - let
me bring you up to date on the company's business operations. I'd like
to begin by unscrambling our first quarter results, which were announced
on April 22. Net income for the first quarter of 2003 was $7.59 per share,
compared to $1.16 per share in the first quarter of last year. But the
first quarter this year included our previously announced $32.3 million
after-tax gain on the sale of our share of the International Herald Tribune.
The first quarter
last year included an after-tax goodwill impairment charge of $12.1 million,
an after-tax charge for an early retirement program at Newsweek of $6.1
million, and a net after-tax gain of $3.8 million, primarily from the
sale of marketable securities. You can do the math - our results were
up sharply compared to 2002.
There is little chance
in this living, breathing world that any other quarter this year will
produce an even remotely comparable earnings gain. The remaining three
of quarters of 2002 stepped up nicely from the first quarter of that year,
so even with excellent results this year, similar increases are not a
possibility. Shareholders should be clear about that.
The Washington Post Company has been affected, of course, by the general
economic and business downturn that followed the outbreak of the war.
First quarter advertising revenue at the newspaper, Newsweek, and Post-Newsweek
Stations was down about $6-to-$7 million from what we expected before
the war began. Since the quarter bore most of the revenue impact from
ad cancellations, it's gratifying that results were as good as they turned
out to be. At the same time, expenses have been quite a bit higher, both
for paper at The Post and Newsweek and for staff expenses, though the
expense impact will be greater in the second quarter than the first.
Newsweek domestic
has had a very strong start in 2003. But Newsweek International has experienced
a significant decline in advertising - after an on-budget start - as a
result of the SARS epidemic. The falloff happened within a four-week period,
and much of it comes from the airline and hotel categories. Singapore
Airlines and Cathay Pacific have cut back in particularly dramatic ways
to offset losses that are running at a multimillion-dollar-a-day clip
because of the staggering drop in Asian travel. Unlike a lot of war-related
cancellations in domestic, the Asian business isn't likely to be rescheduled,
even if the health situation improves. Our Hong Kong office is up and
operating, but it's pretty tough for ad sales people to do much business
when everybody else is discouraging (or banning) face-to-face meetings
with outsiders. All in all, it's an ugly situation.
We are fortunate that
two of our businesses are not advertising-dependent, though neither can
escape being affected by general conditions in the economy.
Our outlook for Cable
One and Kaplan is optimistic. As I mentioned in the annual report, Cable
One lost about 5 percent of its basic subscribers last year to a combination
of weak economies in our markets and satellite competition. I'm pleased
to report that this decline has been reversed. As of March 31 this year,
the cable division had 719,300 basic subscribers, lower than the 751,700
subs at the same point last year, but up slightly from 718,000 basic subscribers
at the end of December. This is a modest increase, but an increase nonetheless.
The gain results in part from newly added direct sales people in almost
every market.
Cable One concluded that our product offering is now broad enough that
going into people's homes to demonstrate it would be very useful. And
that has proved to be true.
When we sell a new
basic subscriber, there is a high likelihood they'll also take digital
and modem service. And cable modem subscribers continue to increase at
very rapid rates - 14 percent of Cable One's customers now take a modem.
At the end of April, there were 100,000 cable modem subscribers, double
the number from a year ago.
These two numbers
- basic subscribers and cable modem subscribers - will drive Cable One's
results for the year. If basic subs continue to strengthen, and if modem
customers continue to grow, Cable One will have a great year. But there
will be no promises from Washington for now.
Kaplan continues
to go gangbusters. The Washington Post Company was up $30 million in operating
income in the first quarter, of which $16 million came from our education
division. In fact, Kaplan had a 21 percent revenue increase and a 10 percent
cost increase. Again, the Kaplan number is so big, it leaves everyone
else in the shade (though Cable One's increase is pretty impressive, too).
Kaplan closed a significant
acquisition on March 31. We purchased Financial Training Corporation (FTC),
a London-based business that prepares British and Asian students for accounting,
bookkeeping, and other exams based on the U.K. system of accounting. We
had come to know FTC well because of the relationship it had with certain
Kaplan Professional companies, and we always regarded them as the best
in this business in the U.K., although they compete with another well-run
company. William Mcpherson and his team are heartily welcomed to Kaplan
and The Washington Post Company. If this acquisition proves to be a successful
one, it provides the base for operations in other similar fields in the
U.K. and possibly elsewhere.
Through the first
quarter, Kaplan continued to grow in all phases of its operations, much
as we described in the annual report. Perhaps most gratifying and astonishing
was the growth in enrollments in the online programs of the Higher Education
Division. Though we are slightly limited in the range of programs we can
offer, the number of students enrolled has doubled since a year ago, and
we believe Kaplan's online higher education programs, taken as a whole,
will be profitable in 2003. They lost a few million last year and much
larger sums in previous years.
All the other phases
of Kaplan's operation continue to show increases in revenue and operating
results. I'm particularly pleased to report that the smallest of Kaplan's
four divisions, Score, seems to be on course to deliver slightly better
than breakeven results for the year. This would represent Score's first
profits. We may not reach profitability if we choose to open more centers
sooner, but Score is headed toward being a decently profitable business.
To touch on a couple
of other topics mentioned in the annual report: Our television stations
will certainly be down meaningfully in profits this year, since we'll
lose nearly $37 million in the election-year and Olympics advertising
we enjoyed in 2002. Our two largest stations are NBC affiliates and benefited
from the Winter Olympics during the first quarter last year.
Our independent station
in Jacksonville had much stronger ratings in the February sweeps than
in the previous November ratings period. Changes in the programming lineup
resulted in surprising strength in primetime and boosted news ratings
at 10 p.m. - critical to the station's future success. We continued to
lead in early news, improved morning news ratings, and came out much improved
in demographics.
To sum up: our four-month
business results don't look terribly different from what a reasonable
person would have expected looking at the numbers in our annual report.
The biggest thing to happen - the FTC acquisition - should be beneficial
and may be quite important to Kaplan's future. Meanwhile, we are focusing
100 percent of our journalistic efforts on telling readers what they need
to know about important events here and around the world, especially the
aftermath of the war.
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