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Knight Ridder 3Q dips
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October 16, 2001: 12:39 p.m. ET
Newspaper publisher suffers from a soft advertising market.
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NEW YORK (CNNmoney) - Knight Ridder Inc. reported Tuesday that earnings tumbled 27 percent in the third quarter after last month's attacks hurt the already weak advertising market, but the results still topped Wall Street forecasts.
The publisher of the Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer and San Jose Mercury News said it earned $55.7 million, or 65 cents a share, down from $76.1 million, or 87 cents a share, in the prior year. Analysts surveyed by earnings tracker First Call expected Knight Ridder to earn 63 cents a share.
Knight Ridder (KRI: up $0.60 to $57.72, Research, Estimates) stock rose in midday trading.
The results came a day after Gannett Co. (GCI: up $0.95 to $65.95, Research, Estimates), the nation's biggest newspaper publisher, also reported lower results that topped analysts' estimates.
"Third-quarter operating results were held back by continuing advertising softness, exacerbated by the terrorist attack on Sept. 11," said CEO Tony Ridder. "In the aftermath, most advertisers curtailed or canceled their normal schedules for the better part of two weeks."
Quarterly revenue fell to $693 million from $769 million.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company also said it continued to expect to earn $2.91 a share for the year, though it still had no idea what the fallout from the terrorist attacks and military operations in Afghanistan would be.
"Although business started to revive a couple of weeks after the terrorist attack, the initiation of bombing in Afghanistan caused another slowdown," Ridder said. "Our ultimate performance will be contingent upon resumption of more normal business patterns." 
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