Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Goldman Sachs Lowers Forecast for Newspaper Growth
"The newspaper business is lousy and its going to be worse next year than we thought." I've taken a bit of license to paraphrase what seems to be the verdict of Goldman-Sachs as it lowers its already low growth predictions for 2006.
The weak ad environment for newspapers has caused Goldman to scale back its 2006 growth forecast to 3.5 percent from 4.0 percent. The note said national ad growth would once again be weakest at 1.0 percent, followed by retail, 2.5 percent, and classifieds at 3.6 percent. The bright spot continues to be online newspaper revenues, which are projected to grow an impressive 25 percent in 2006. Despite this, online will still represent 5.0 percent of total newspaper revenues.
Ross Fadner reported on the Goldman Sachs analysis in MediaDaily News.
