Lee Enterprises

Lee Enterprises

Lee headquarters
Type	Public (NYSE: LEE)
Industry	Media
Founded	1890
Founder	A. W. Lee
Headquarters	Davenport, Iowa United States
Key people	Mary Junck (Executive Chairman) Kevin Mowbray (President and CEO)
Products	Newspapers and television station
Revenue	US$648.5 million (2015)[1]
Operating income	US$109.3 million (2015)[1]
Net income	US$24.31 million (2015)[1]
Total assets	US$763.5 million (2015)[1]
Number of employees	10,700[2]
Website	Lee Enterprises website

Lee Enterprises is a publicly traded American media company. It publishes 54 daily newspapers in 23 states, and more than 300 weekly, classified, and specialty publications. Lee Enterprises was founded in 1890 by Alfred Wilson Lee and is based in Davenport, Iowa.

The company also provides online services, including websites supporting its daily newspapers and other publications. As of September 2013, Lee had 23.2 million unique web and mobile visitors, with 209.1 million pages viewed. Lee also owns 82.5% of TownNews.com, an Internet service company. The company offers commercial printing services to its customers.

Lee Enterprises is currently the fourth largest newspaper group in the United States of America. The company acquired Howard Publications (16 daily newspapers) for $694 million in 2002^[3] and Pulitzer, Inc. (14 daily, over 100 non-daily), for $1.5 billion in 2005.^[4]

Since January 2012, its Executive Chairman, Mary Junck, has also been Chairman of the Associated Press.^[5]

Chapter 11 bankruptcy, debt discharge and reorganization (2011)

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011.^[6] It emerged from bankruptcy less than two months later. In April 2012, Warren Buffett took a stake in Lee Enterprises (through Berkshire Hathaway Inc.), buying $85 million of the company's debt from Goldman Sachs Group.^[7]

In June 2012, Berkshire Hathaway filed an amended Form 13F (13F-HR/A) for the period ending March 31, 2012.^[8] This document disclosed that Berkshire accumulated $2,119,000 or 1,655,125 common shares of Lee Enterprises, or a 3.2 percent stake.^[9] The document noted that the confidentiality of this transaction was requested but denied by the SEC on May 25, 2012.^[10]

Bailout and recapitalization (2013)

In April 2013, Lee Enterprises announced that Berkshire Hathaway refinanced the remaining Pulitzer acquisition debt equating to $94 million.^[11] Lee Enterprises incurred no cost for doing this. The collateral involved was the TNI Partner stake including the Arizona Daily Star and azstarnet.com. The result of this was a reduction in interest from a variable rate of 11.3% to a fixed rate of 9% while at the same time, extending the debt maturity date of the debt from December 2015 to April 2017. At the time of the announcement Lee Enterprises noted they had $893 million left to pay off. Lee paid off and retired its New Pulitzer notes in June 2015, 6 months before the original maturity date and 22 months before the new maturity date. Lee also refinanced its remaining debt in 2014 in order to extend the maturities from 2015 and 2017 to 2019 and 2022.

Lee newspapers^[12]

* Newspaper owned by Capital Newspapers, a partnership with The Capital Times Company.

Television subsidiary sale (2000)

Lee formerly operated a broadcasting division, which it sold in 2000 to pay off debt and in order to focus on newspaper publishing. Most of the TV stations were sold to Emmis Communications, and have all been sold, as of 2007, to other companies.

• (**) – Indicates that it was built and signed on by Lee Enterprises.

In addition, Lee also operated KASY-TV in Albuquerque which was owned by Ramar Communications. That station was a UPN affiliate. KASY was sold to WB affiliate KWBQ in 1999 when the LMA was terminated.

References

External links

• Lee Enterprises
• Newspapers
• History