As we all know, CBS (CBS/NYSE) reported earnings results as a separate company yesterday for the first time since being spun off from Viacom. This morning's Wall Street Journal has a good piece on the subject by Brooks Barnes.
I notice that WSJ.com now has some different numbers for CBS. I should note that, for what it's worth, WSJ.com gets its numbers from Reuters. It says the company is selling for 0.97 times book value and 0.82 times sales. The market cap is listed as more than $19.45 billion with 772.71 million shares outstanding. The dividend yield is 2.54%.
Does any of this change my view of CBS? No. It's still one of the cheapest large media companies around in a sector that's undervalued in general. Some investment analysts say it deserves to be this cheap, but I like owning undervalued and boring assets. For a few years, anyway. ;-)
In a nutshell, I view CBS as undervalued -- period -- with a top-notch management team committed to shareholders thrown in for free. They've already boosted the dividend by 14% and announced plans to sell the first of what could be several "non core" assets later this year.
I'm staying tuned . . . probably for 3 to 5 years.
In case you haven't seen it, SeekingAlpha has posted a transcript of CBS's conference call on their website.
Also, the price-to-sales ratio is still off, the press release stated Revenue was $14.5 billion.
If you take their numbers ($19.45/.82) it implies Revenue of $23.7 billion. Which is in the ballpark of what the combined CBS/Viacom was doing.
From personal experience, I would only use these secondary data providers as a starting point. Nothing beats the actual SEC filings.
Good luck with the investment(s) and the blog and thanks for tolerating my quibbles...
Best,
Ryan
Posted by: Ryan | February 24, 2006 at 02:35 PM
Many thanks, Ryan.
Good points about the data, and this is a good reminder for all readers of this blog to view my purchases as starting points for their own research before buying.
I appreciate your good wishes and hope you'll continue visiting this site often.
Posted by: John | February 24, 2006 at 10:22 PM