Buffett Case Study

Q3. How much value, if any, does Buffett derive from the credit agreement?

There are two parts of the credit agreement, the 8-year term loan and the penny warrants. The $400 million term loan accompanying with a $45 million revolving credit facility will give Buffett a chance to earn at an interest rate of 10.5%. Based on the result of calculation, the NPV that Berkshire can gain is $51.2 million. Berkshire would receive “penny warrants”, which would represent 19.9% of Media General’s common shares outstanding if exercised. By using Black–Scholes–Merton model, the value of the warrants equals to $14,564,265 (We directly used the historical volatility in MEG management compensation – employee stock options). Besides, after relieving the newspaper

While MEG’s broadcasting decreased 17% and digital media increased 8%, its newspaper was down 43%. According to Figure 1, only newspaper division has kept declining since 2007. By contrast, digital revenues on local websites have increased for many years, from MEG Annual Reports, various years. Even broadcasting business performed better than newspaper, which met a dramatically increase in 2010. Given the sustain development of electronic media, it’s inadvisable for MEG to sell its digital media or broadcasting division. As for other tradeable assets, since MEG eliminated its dividend in 2009 and reached a nearly 100% debt/total capitalization ratio in 2011, we speculated that MEG had already used up its non-core assets to lift its financial

Firstly, this acquisition is beneficial to MEG’s future expansion. MEG will gain enough money to improve the financial situation and develop other business better, such as digital media and TV. Compared with newspaper division, these businesses have more potential to grow stably. More concentrate on these fields is the correct way to develop the company. Additionally, Berkshire Hathaway has already run its own media business since 1973. Exhibit 5 shows that The Buffalo News has experienced a quite slow decrease since 2000, which indicated the firm has enough experience to manage MEG’s newspaper business well. Also, Buffet will become shareholder after the purchase, in result of this MEG will get more enterprise resource from Buffett. Secondly, this bid is beneficial to Marshall Morton’s own career development. To sell the money-losing business will help his company more concentrate on the profitable business. Because of the profit growth in the future, Marshall Morton’s reputation will increase as well. At the same time, after the bid news release, MEG’s stock will be expected to increase. Marshall Morton has been MEG’s CEO since 2005, and Exhibit 6 shows that there existed 6 employee stock options from 2005 to 2011. Once MEG turns the business around, Marshall Morton would benefit a lot from the stock increase, not to mention rebuilding all shareholders’ confidence on