Times Mirror 2nd-Quarter Profit Rises 6%

Times Mirror Co., citing an earnings recovery at its flagship Los Angeles Times newspaper, said Wednesday that its second-quarter profit from continuing operations rose 6% from a year earlier after excluding one-time gains and charges in both periods.

“We’ve made solid progress in the first half of 1999,” Mark H. Willes, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Times Mirror, said in a statement.

He noted that The Times recorded its first year-over-year increase in quarterly operating profit after five straight quarters of year-over-year declines. Times Mirror’s Eastern newspapers and its Jeppesen Sanderson unit, which provides flight information, also were strong in the period, Willes said.

Earnings from continuing operations, exclusive of the one-time gains and charges, climbed to $74.7 million, or 92 cents per diluted share, from $70.5 million, or 72 cents per share. Per-share earnings posted a bigger jump than overall earnings because Times Mirror had 17% fewer shares outstanding in the latest period.

Times Mirror’s net income for the three months ended June 30 totaled $85.3 million, or $1.05 per share, which included a $10.7-million after-tax gain from its sale of Hollywood Online, an Internet site.

A year earlier, the company’s net income was $49.2 million, or 49 cents a share, which reflected restructuring and other one-time charges totaling $24.7 million after taxes.

Times Mirror’s second-quarter revenue rose 6%, to $801.3 million from $755.8 million.

The company said its overall newspaper-publishing operating profit, exclusive of the one-time items, climbed 5.4% from a year earlier, to $126.5 million from $120.1 million. “Strong gains in national advertising and declines in newsprint expense” fueled the increase, it said.

Times Mirror shares closed Wednesday at $61 a share, up 25 cents, in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.