UPM Reports Q2 Results

http://www.upm.com/EN/INVESTORS/Investor-News/Pages/Growth-businesses-continue-to-perform-well,-weak-quarter-for-Paper-in-Europe-001-Tue-06-Aug-2013-09-30.aspx

Q2/2013 (compared with Q2/2012)  

Earnings per share excluding special items was EUR 0.20 (0.16), and reported EUR 0.22 (0.39) Operating profit excluding special items was EUR 138 million, 5.5% of sales (128 million, 4.9%)  EBITDA was EUR 258 million, 10.2% of sales (325 million, 12.3% of sales) Fixed costs were EUR 36 million lower than last year. http://www.paperage.com/2013news/08_06_2013upm_earnings.html

UPM's CEO Jussi Pesonen made the following comments about the company's second quarter 2013 financial results and the markets it serves:

"The second quarter was in line with our expectations: growth businesses continued to perform well, whereas Paper was impacted by lower delivery volumes and prices in Europe. Our operating profit excluding special items was EUR 138 million (128 million). Operating cash flow was lower than Q2 last year due to a temporary increase in working capital.

"Our Pulp business experienced a strong quarter, with good delivery volumes and increased prices. In Label, our growth actions resulted in increased volumes, more than offsetting the increased fixed costs caused by expanded operations. In Energy, profitability continued to be strong, despite being impacted by lower hydropower volumes. Plywood and Timber continued on a positive track despite the challenges of European markets.

"Paper experienced what we believe will prove to be the weakest quarter in 2013. Profitability continued on a good level in our Chinese and speciality paper operations, but sales margins in our European graphic paper business as well as export business were significantly lower than last year. In Q2, our Paper business also suffered a significant negative impact from unrealised energy hedges, especially when compared with Q1 2013.

UPM Announces New Business Structure

http://www.upm.com/EN/MEDIA/All-news/Pages/UPM%E2%80%99s-new-business-structure-will-sharpen-operational-focus-and-facilitate-portf-001-Tue-06-Aug-2013-10-06.aspx

UPM will implement a new business structure to drive clear change in profitability. The company will also seek to simplify and further develop its business portfolio.

UPM's new structure will consist of the following Business Areas and reporting segments: UPM Biorefining, UPM Energy, UPM Raflatac, UPM Paper Asia, UPM Paper Europe and UPM Plywood. Forests and wood procurement will be reported in Other operations. The new structure will be valid as of 1 November 2013.

The new Paper Business Areas will be located at the centers of their markets. UPM Paper Asia will be headquartered in Shanghai, China, and UPM Paper Europe in Augsburg, Germany. The Group Head Office will remain in Helsinki, Finland.

Appivon Reports Q2 Results

http://www.paperage.com/2013news/08_06_2013appvion_earnings.html

Appvion's second quarter 2013 net sales of $201.5 million decreased 5.8% compared to second quarter 2012 net sales of $213.9 million. Those results included a 4.2% decrease resulting from discontinued sales of carbonless paper into certain non-strategic international markets. Second quarter 2013 sales of thermal papers were 5.3% higher than the previous year quarter while external Encapsys sales improved by 4.9%.

Appvion reported second quarter 2013 operating income of $20.4 million compared to an operating loss of $30.6 million during second quarter 2012. Second quarter 2012 results included $42.9 million of expense related to ceasing papermaking operations at the West Carrollton, Ohio, facility and transitioning to Domtar base paper. In addition, second quarter 2012 spending included $6.5 million of costs associated with the business combination transaction that was discontinued.

Weyerhaeuser Namce Chief Accounting Officer

http://www.weyerhaeuser.com/Company/Media/NewsReleases/NewsRelease?dcrID=2013-08-05_HillmanAppointedCAOforWY

Weyerhaeuser Company (WY) today announced the appointment of Jeanne M. Hillman as vice president and chief accounting officer for the company, effective Aug. 5, 2013. Hillman succeeds Jerald W. Richards, who recently resigned from his position to become chief financial officer at Potlatch Corporation.

RISI Study: China Driving Wood Fiber Market

China's demand for imported wood fiber, in the form of logs, woodchips or other forest products, increased by an average annual rate of nearly 16% from 1997-2012. According to a study published today by RISI, the leading information provider for the global forest products industry, this demand was split relatively evenly between logs and lumber for construction, woodchips and pulp for the paper industry. 2013 China Timber Outlook examines the prospects for this rapid growth to be sustained.
"Future growth in China's imports of timber and forest products will definitely be at a slower rate. But, since China's import demand is already equal to 10% of the world's total timber harvest, even a relatively slower growth rate will still mean a substantial increase in demand," said Bob Flynn, Director of International Timber for RISI, and main author of the study.

India Paper Mills Look to Import Pulp

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/paper-mills-look-to-overseas-pulp-wood-sources/article4992750.ece

As domestic pulp wood prices soar, large paper mills are resorting to imports to meet raw material requirement.

According to industry representatives, ITC, West Coast Paper, JK Paper and BILT have imported wood chips and logs from various sources, this could be start of a trend if the initial efforts are found to be viable.

The growing competition for pulp wood in the domestic market has nearly doubled prices to over Rs 5,000 a tonne in the last five years, according to industry sources. Between 2008 and 2010 mills added over 16 lakh tonnes a year of printing and writing paper production capacity, a one-third jump over the production capacity previously.

Washington Post Sold to Jeff Bezos

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to-be-sold-to-jeff-bezos/2013/08/05/ca537c9e-fe0c-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html?hpid=z1

The Washington Post Co. agreed Monday to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations.
Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.
Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will get a new, still undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without the newspaper.
The deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for The Post, Washington’s leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation’s politics and policy. Few people were aware that a sale was in the works for the paper, an institution that has covered presidents and local communities and gained worldwide attention for its stories about the Watergate scandal and, in June, disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance programs.

IDG CEO Steps Down

http://www.foliomag.com/2013/bob-carrigan-steps-down-idg-ceo#.UgFJJFOYyKw

Bob Carrigan is stepping down as CEO of IDG Communications Worldwide, the company announced today. Carrigan will transition out of his role at the end of IDG's fiscal year, ending September 30, and will join the company's board of directors.
He was promoted to the global CEO position in 2008 after having been IDG Communication's U.S. CEO since 2005. Carrigan joined IDG in 1987.
He is considered one of the pioneers of the print-to-digital migration—aggressively transitioning IDG media brands away from print as necessary and greatly expanding the company's digital and event business. According to IDG, more than half of its revenue now comes from digital.
IDG Enterprise CEO Michael Friedenberg has been named CEO of IDG Communications U.S. Now in addition to leading the b-to-b media brands, Friedenberg will also oversee the consumer, SMB and TechNetwork groups.

Magazines Double Digital Circulation

http://adage.com/article/media/magazines-digital-circulation-climbs-remains-small/243522/

Magazines' downward trend at newsstands continued in the first half of this year, with single-copy sales falling roughly 10% from a year earlier, the Alliance for Audited Media said Tuesday in its
Publishers' digital editions continued their steady march upward. For the first half of 2013, the number of digital replica editions roughly doubled to 10.2 million, compared with 5.4 million the previous year, the Alliance for Audited Media reported.
Digital editions still comprise a tiny percentage of overall magazine circulation, at just 3.3%.
The top magazine by overall paid and verified circulation is AARP The Magazine, at 21.9 million, which marks a decline of 2.7% from the previous year. Woman's World, which is published by Bauer Media, was the top magazine for single-copy sales at 1.1 million, a 4% drop from the previous year.
Among digital replica editions, Game Informer Magazine is tops with a circulation of 2.9 million. No. 2 among digital replicas is Reader's Digest, with a circulation of just over 292,000.
The Alliance for Audited Media, formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations,compiled total circulation for 390 magazines, which reported their paid and verified subscriptions and single copy sales to the organization.
The 390 major magazines included in the report are just a fraction of the more than 7,000 titles sold in the U.S., it noted.
Newsstand sales, the statement continued, only account for around 10% of overall circulation, and AAM measures only a portion of that.

Print Book Output Up in 2012

http://ipdahome.org/newsstand/?cat=296

The number of “traditionally” produced print titles rose 3.3% in 2012 to 301,642, according to new figures from R.R. Bowker. The total includes print books from both traditional publishing houses and self-publishers, but not works from nontraditional companies that specialize in reprints of public domain titles. Output from those companies rose 10.9%, to 1.46M. Taken together, total print output rose 9.5% in 2012 to 1.761M. Number of fiction print books rose 10%, to 47,420; juvenile titles rose nearly 6%, to 2,624. Between 2009–the year ebooks began to make meaningful inroads in the industry–and 2012, print output fell by less than 1%.

What IBT Wants With Newsweek

http://adage.com/article/media/ibt-media-buys-newsweek-iac/243495/

"We are 100% a digital publisher," said Jonathan Davis, co-founder and chief content officer at IBT Media, which publishes 10 global news sites including its flagship publication the International Business Times. "That being said, we don't want to exclude [print] from our future plans."
IAC/InterActiveCorp said Saturday that it had agreed to sell Newsweek to IBT Media for an undisclosed amount. The deal did not include The Daily Beast, the IAC property with which Newsweek was combined.
Mr. Davis and IBT Media's other co-founder, CEO Etienne Uzac, said Newsweek gives the seven-year-old company a measure of cachet in the editorial space and additional revenue streams on the business side that it didn't have in the past. The International Business Times is supported by advertising. Newsweek provides the company with not only additional ad revenue, but also a base of paying subscribers, which they said has been growing since Newsweek went digital-only at the end of 2012.

The Economics Of Publishing

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/206155/the-economics-of-publishing-print-fire-sales-indi.html#axzz2bDa4f3zD

It’s a fire sale in the print journalism industry, and to use a popular analogy, those with digital capital are gobbling up prized publishing assets at the equivalent of 10 digital cents on the analog dollar. Well, the math may not work out exactly that way, but there’s no question that the sale of three major publishers -- The Boston Globe, Newsweek and The Washington Post -- in as many days reflects the declining market valuations of important print media, and the rising fortunes of the digital kind.
In the most striking of the flurry of print media sales, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced a deal late Monday to acquire the Washington Post Co.’s publishing assets, including flagship newspaper The Washington Post for $250 million.

JC Penney Names SVP Marketing

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/jcpenney-poaches-krafts-debra-berman-cmo-151692

JCPenney has turned to Kraft's Debra Berman, an executive with deep brand and agency experience, to direct the struggling department store giant's comeback.

At Penney, Berman is svp of marketing.  Her appointment comes on the heels of the Plano, Texas-based chain's return to its longtime discount-driven strategy—ditched 18 months ago only to yield extremely poor results.

This is just the latest development in a year of change for Penney's, following the April firing of CEO Ron Johnson and the rehire of longtime chief exec Mike Ullman. Berman worked for agencies including DDB and Saatchi & Saatchi before joining Kraft in 2009.

Bright Spot for Magazine Circulation

http://www.adweek.com/news/press/gun-publications-are-bright-spot-magazine-circulation-151710

It hasn't been a particularly great year for magazine circulation, but one category is shining as a beacon of hope for the American publishing industry: guns.

American Rifleman and America’s 1st Freedom, both of which are benefits of NRA membership, saw their circulations increase 14 percent to 1.9 million and 8 percent to 545,019, respectively, in the first half of the year versus the year-ago period. Handguns and Guns & Ammo, published by InterMedia Outdoors, saw their circ jump 16 percent to 137,648 and 7 percent to 416,224, respectively. 

Those numbers notwithstanding, overall circulation of 390 measured titles declined about 1 percent in the first half, with newsstand sales down 10 percent, according to newly released data from the Alliance for Audited Media (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations).

Black Liquor Saga

http://blogs.whattheythink.com/going-green/2013/08/the-red-and-the-black/

I confess that I have not been following the saga of so-called “black liquor” (no, nothing to do with Johnny Walker Black, which was my initial thought, but perhaps that’s just me), but over at Dead Tree Edition, our friend Mr. Tree (if that is his name) has been tracking the various boondoggles—and it sounds like he could use a few belts of said Johnny Walker Black right about now.
Here’s the saga in a nutshell:
So-called black liquor is the sludge—“spent cooking liquor” is the more or less official term for it—that is generated during the “kraft” paper pulping process. Kraft pulp—generated through a chemical process—is used to make  high-brightness papers like copy paper, high-end coated paper, and other freesheets, as well as certain packaging materials. Other pulping processes, such as mechanical, that are used to make newsprint or “fluff” pulp that goes into tissue, don’t generate black liquor.
But more than simply useless muck, black liquor is actually a valuable fuel source, and is reused by paper companies to help generate power for the mill. This is nothing new; paper mills have been burning black liquor since the 1930s.

2012 PRIMIR Research: The Label Sector

http://whattheythink.com/articles/64753-label-sector-excerpts-2012-primir-research/

Label growth will continue, driven by several factors. One major factor is the continued stream of regulatory requirements mandating label changes on a wide variety of consumer products. This factor does not show signs of diminishing and will help drive label production to move forward. Another growth-enabling factor is the trend to connect packaging to social media and on-line brand campaigns. This is especially strong in the label application due to the relative ease in producing labels versus other forms of packaging and to the prevalence of digital printing in the labels application.