The internet, not DU30, is killing the Inquirer

There was apparently good reason why the senoras at the Inquirer again conducted their by now trademark bigay-bawi operation – handing out copies of the year-end financial report to the minority shareholders, but retrieving them back at the end of the annual meeting.

According to a copy of an audited annual report finally secured by a minority shareholder, the Philippine Daily Inquirer posted a P215-million loss for 2017, an astounding reversal of fortune for the broadsheet tabloid since the year before it was still able to squeak in a modest P15-million profit. In contrast, the Philippine STAR newspaper alone, excluding the related businesses, cleared 2017 with P95million profit, this we have on good authority.

The STAR’s Port Area neighbor, the Manila Bulletin is still also above water despite the wholesale digital switch of news reading habits, reporting P49.8-million net income for 2017.

This, however, is not an apples-to-apples comparison, since the Bulletin, the minority shareholders included, owns the printing presses, the one-hectare property and building in Intramuros, as well as seven provincial branches.

The Inquirer, on the other hand, is just, well, the print dinosaur by itself.

This is so because the Inquirer senoras somehow had managed to exclude the minority shareholder-journalists – while preaching financial inclusion to the Ayala Avenue-Diliman-Yellow echo chamber – from the ownership of the building and the two blocks of the Chino Roces property and printing assets.

Even the “Inquirer” website operations is a misnomer, the internet operations being another exclusive senora domain, along with Radyo Inquirer, with the Inquirer newspaper reduced to being merely a supplier of news to the broadcast and web operations.

Unlike the Bulletin with its P3.475 billion in paid-up capital and nearly P200 million in retained earnings, with total current assets of P3.2 billion against total liabilities of about P1.6 billion as of end-2017, the Inquirer by comparison is skating on thin ice with its P500 million paid-up capitalization.

One does not need a PhD in rocket science to project where the road is heading if Inquirer suffers another financial loss of similar magnitude this year and next.

(The Vancouver-based former Inquirer president, Danilo Venida, and fellow minority shareholder Victor C. Agustin have a ‘simple’ solution: The Inquirer broadsheet should just shut down and distribute whatever remaining capital to its shareholders while there is still something left.

The senoras can simultaneously transfer the Inquirer liabilities to the website operations and merge them with other related companies like the real estate company to strengthen the enlarged corporate balance sheet. After all, they all belong to one caboodle, the exercise amounting to transferring from one pocket to the other pocket.

The question is, would the senoras put their money where their libertarian heart is?)

And that was probably why the senoras were forced to admit to their worried editors, after acknowledging that the announced deal with white knight Ramon S. Ang had essentially collapsed, that they wanted a resolution to the ownership sale by this year-end.

According to the industry chatter, the senoras have already returned the P1 billion that the San Miguel president had supposedly advanced as down payment and as proof of good intentions.

If that account is correct, this raises the question, how did the senoras book the exit of the PLDT Group from Inquirer, given that RSA himself has admitted to providing the exit parachute for the PLDT Group?

The answer, if we may venture a guess, may lie at the bottom front page of the Inquirer newspaper.

Meanwhile, to rally their troops, the senoras even projected a better 2018 for their newspaper. We wish them luck, for the sake of our journalist colleagues whose profitsharing scheme, courtesy of Inquirer founding partners Eugenia Apostol, Betty Go-Belmonte, and Florangel Rosario Braid, is now just a memory.

But from our listening post, it looks like columnist even to logist Tim Yap, just as in the past, will have another chance to crack his cutting thanksgiving remark at the next

STAR Christmas party: “Thank God we are enjoying steak at a five-star hotel while the other is feeding its employees with packed-lunch by the company driveway.”

We cannot disagree while tut-tutting, Ang lupit mo, Tita Timmy!

Heard through the grapevine

This e-mail exchange happened between a business columnist and a millennial marketing communications officer of a multinational company:

Marketing man: Hi, you are invite... Please see invitation below and click ‘RSVP Yes’ for your confirmation.

Journalist: Yes, I will attend (after clicking the RSVP button).

Marketing man: Hi, would you please send your name, company name and your designation.

Journalist: You invited me without knowing my name and who I am affiliated with???

That exchange happened last month. The industry briefing is for this Wednesday. The marketing millennial has not gotten back since.

If we may borrow a PNoy line to Alan Peter Cayetano and offer it to the poor soul: Have you tried Google?

E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com