For the past year or so, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been a consistent voice of pessimism, and he forecast an ugly economy before his big-media peers did. And now he’s more upbeat than his fellow media CEOs. Here’s his opening salvo:
“I am not an economist…but it is increasingly clear that the worst is over….As you know, I have been uncharacteristically pessimistic in recent calls, though I would argue that it was a well-founded concern. But there are emerging signs in some of our businesses that the days of precipitous decline are done and that revenues are beginning to look healthier.”
Not only is this a turnaround, it’s a turnaround from just a month ago, when Murdoch professed to be full of bearish sentiment at the cable industry’s annual show.
So what changed? Advertisers have started spending money again, he says: “Everybody was in shock by the economy and all business was falling of a cliff in the last 3 months of last year. Including me.” And that meant ads disappeared in January, February and March. But now they’re coming back. “It’s not back to the old levels. Don’t get me wrong, he says. “But at the very least we seem to have hit the floor.”
There is some nuance to this: When asked by an analyst why that optimism has prompted him to reinvest in his company, via stock buyback, Murdoch hedged: “I want a little more evidence that the worst is over…there is a real feeling that we’ve hit bottom and there is something turning, but this is early days yet.”
Parole Fatti Pensieri