Washington Post 2014 Annual Report Download - page 5

2014 ANNUAL REPORT 3
of it, now and over the years. Our small acquisi-
tions, made over the past few years, look good.
We can invest in our familiar, traditional busi-
nesses; we can invest in new businesses; once in
a great while, we can invest in starting a business
(we promise not to get too carried away with our-
selves for the amazing success of SocialCode);
and, we can invest in stocks if, from time to time,
they seem to us undervalued. And, of course,
we can continue to buy in our own stock when it
looks attractive.
Tim and I are dierent in many ways. (Irritatingly,
he’s a lot younger than I.) But the Graham and
O’Shaughnessy families are alike in one way: we’re
heavily concentrated in GHC stock—in my case,
it’s well over 90% of my family’s assets. We want
to make the stock more valuable for us and for
you, our shareholders/partners. Our outlook will be
long term; as always, the focus on quarterly results
around here will be zero. (If you are a shareholder
and YOU care about our quarterly results, perhaps
you should think about selling the stock.) The focus
on long-term increase in value will be total.
/ / /
When we sold The Washington Post to Je Bezos in
2013, we included, along with the newspaper, several
other assets: a printing plant in Springfield, VA, and
the land around it; Robinson Terminal Warehouse
Corp.; the weekly and semi-weekly newspapers
originally called The Gazette Newspapers; Express
and El Tiempo Latino; and Greater Washington
Publishing. After asking Je if he was interested,
we did not include our headquarters building at 1150
15th Street, NW; our stake in Classified Ventures; and
some land in Alexandria, VA, that includes warehouses
formerly used by Robinson Terminal.
All of these were sold in late 2013 and 2014, except
the Alexandria land. (We hope to complete this sale
in 2015, but the sale must be approved by local
authorities.) The oce building brought us almost
$160 million, and, to our utter astonishment, our
16.5% stake in Classified Ventures brought us more
than $500 million (both sums are pre-tax).
The CV sale deserves some retrospective atten-
tion. It was the third of three newspaper-industry
joint ventures we invested in in the 1990s. The first
two, New Century Network and CareerPath, were
expensive failures. One reason was the consortium
form of management: each of our partners was a
decent company, represented by excellent execu-
tives. But disagreements among us all led to slow
decision making.
That CV survived and thrived in the face of the
same problem was due to the talent and persis-
tence of its CEO Dan Jauernig and an able team,
among whom Dick Burke and Mitch Golub were
long enduring. I would also like to thank Alan Spoon,
We want to make the stock more
valuable for us and for you, our
shareholders/partners. Our outlook
will be long term.