FT spells out £1.5bn fall in Johnston Press value

Depressing piece in the Financial Times today Lifeblood drains from local press in which Ben Fenton puts the fall in value of Johnston Press's market capitalisation in this dramatic fashion: "In the past five years, the shares of Johnston, once the home of 30 per cent-plus profit margins, have fallen so far that it is possible to calculate its current market capitalisation simply by removing the first two digits of its peak equity value of £1,547m in 2004.
"At a mere £47m today, Johnston shareholders have seen a £1.5bn, or 97 per cent, loss in value."
The FT also quotes analyst Claire Enders saying: “There will be some papers that sell 50,000 to 100,000 papers [per issue] that will survive, and quite a lot of very small, very local papers such as Tindle Newspapers, nurturing their local communities, but there may not be very much in between. Obviously there will be exceptions.”
She is doubtful about more consolidation but described the current merger regulations applying to the regional press as "ridiculous". Enders says: “I am struggling to see that a policy of ‘bigger-is-better’ has worked to date, but it is true that the rules as they are now are ridiculous because they penalise the local press as if competition hadn’t changed fundamentally.”