Newspaper owner Sir Ray Tindle has admitted it would be “wonderful” to own Johnston Press as he increased his stake in the regional publishing group to 8pc.
But speaking to BBC Scotland, the veteran entrepreneur added that a full takeover of the Edinburgh-based group was “not possible.
Sir Ray, who alerady owns more than 200 local papers, has been steadily increasing his stake in JP over the past 18 months and is now the company’s third largest shareholder.
Last week he bought another 600,500 shares to take his overall holding to 51.2m – worth £3.1m at Friday’s closing price of 6p.
Tindle, who is based in Surrey, told BBC Scotland he sees Johnston Press as “one of the best collections of newspapers in the country.”
“I know they’ve got problems, everyone knows that, but they will survive the problems and you will find that they’ve got good titles,” he said.
Asked if he was interested in taking over the group, which now has a market capitalisation of less than £40m but debts around nine times that figure, Sir Ray said “that would be wonderful, but not possible”.
Johnston Press’s two biggest shareholders are Malaysian-based PanOcean Management, which owns 20pc and is represented on the company’s board by Ralph Marshall. and investment company Orbis Holdings, with 10.7pc.
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What does Sir Raymond know that the rest of us don’t? JP has a great portfolio but it is saddled with crippling debts. If and when inflation rises and the lending rate increases, it’s a recipe for disaster.
I’ll be watching the share price with increased interest.
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I’m sure that Sir Ray would be among the first to take advantage of the sort of managed break-up Chris Oakley envisaged in his speech last week.
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I don’t get it. Sir Ray is losing 5k a week at South London Press, yet he is opening titles left right and centre. Baffling.
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The debt has been restructured. The downgrading of assets and the aggressive repayment plan over the next few years will be painful, but they will leave JP much stronger in three years time than it is now.
Plus there’s an ambitious plan for digital growth – I don’t agree with it all but I can certainly see a lot of potential.
The projection from £18m to £52m in four years is ambitious, but not totally unrealistic.
I don’t like the idea of five templated newspapers, but in reality it probably wont hurt sales that much and will make them more “efficient” (fewer jobs needed).
Price rises will lead to more audience losses, which isn’t a great long-term strategy, but short to mid-term the papers will actually make more money by charging more to slightly fewer people.
As a journalist I don’t like a lot of these plans and think some of it will be bad for journalism.
But I can certainly see some of the commercial logic in a lot of it.
I predict the share price will top 10p by the end of the year, making Sir Ray’s £3.1m shares worth £5.12m.
What worries me is we’re damaging the quality of our journalism too much. To use management speak, quality, local journalism is still our USP. Lose that, we’re screwed.
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