A major print-related company is likely to go bankrupt this year, according to the vast majority of voters in a Dead Tree Edition poll that ended tonight. The voters just can't agree on which company it will be.
Out of 743 voters, only 158 (21%) chose "None of the above" on the question of which four print-dependent U.S. companies would go belly up in 2012. Leading the pack was Barnes & Noble, with 227 votes -- which still means that 70% of the voters think it won't go bankrupt this year.
With 161 votes (21%), Quad/Graphics edged out Verso Paper (157 votes; 21%) for second place, with the U.S. Postal Service not far behind at 153 votes (20%).
Judging by the sources of traffic to the articles about the poll, the voters seemed to be mostly a mix of people working in the postal, printing, paper, and publishing industries.
The voting seems to have had no impact on the companies' stock prices. Despite being voted most likely to succumb, B&N's stock price is up 4% since the poll was announced on Jan. 19. Verso is up almost 10%, but Quad's stock dropped nearly 12%.
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6 comments:
Check out Verso today, up over 20% in the morning. If the capacity in supercalendered has been yanked enough in North Am and global balance stabilizes in the groundwood/magazine paper area, these guys will surprise people. they have their energy facilities up which will save them a lot of money, people focus on the debt and dont understand that VRS has no near term maturities. good risk reward here, can it be a zero, yes but can it be up 3-5x from here too? yes.
I vote for Vertis/ACG to declare along with Verso.
Vertis/ACG are already in Chapter 11.
Quad will be next. I shorted at 20. Will make back all I lost on Quebecor World and then some.
I vote for Printing Impressions to go under. Just got the new format magazine today, they finally gave up on the super sized trade journal format.
Shame on you for putting a vote up like this connected to your newsletter.
Personally, I liked the vote. Got out some of the best comments in a long time. We in the industry have to air our opinions and concerns - keeps us thinking about short and long term issues we HAVE to deal with - in the end, we all want the same thing - to be on the team that had the foresight and focus to last longer than the competition and stick with the print industry until the end...
Based on your numbers... everyone is just guessing and nothing has been determined.
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