Editorials
Tough summer for stock stock
No, that’s not a typo in the head-line. Managers of the two publicly-traded companies in the stock photo business, Jupitermedia and A21, will not look back on the summer of ‘08 fondly, at least not with respect to their stock prices. Jupiter’s stock price closed at $1.17 on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend – a slide of 30% from a close of $1.71 the Monday after Memorial Day. Over that same period, A21 Inc. hovered at literal penny stock status having floated between $0.01 and $0.03.
In addition to the poor stock price performances by both companies, each had a telling disappearance (of sorts) among the managerial ranks. A21’s CFO, Tom Costanza announced his resignation on August 8. The change at Jupiter is somewhat more mysterious. CEO Alan Meckler discontinued his often entertaining and always highly opinionated blog posts in June. He made one post after that, on July 17, in response to questions he’d received about this break:
“I have decided, for the time being, to take a hiatus on posting. I have been extremely busy on initiatives for evolving Jupitermedia. Many of these initiatives have been mentioned in this space and others I cannot comment on as I do not care to let competitors know what we are working on.”
Despite this brief explanation, one can’t help but wonder whether he isn’t keeping a low profile for more important reasons; a harbinger of a significant deal to come. The notion that Jonathan Klein’s move to New York City had nothing to do with goings on at the company seemed implausible at the time. We now know there was much more to it.
Getting back to stock prices - the Wall Street kind – their trends seem to mirror those of stock prices of the image variety; going down and staying down. The industry overall continues to try to sort itself out vis-à-vis the wonderfully high numbers of images licensed at dismally low (below photographer subsistence level) prices. Cracks had begun to appear in iStock’s invincibility just as Getty went private. Sales growth had begun to slow.
As mentioned in this space before, I suspect Getty management came to the conclusion that the stock photo business had changed so much that their continued success relied on a long-term strategy that wouldn’t stand up to the short-term demands of Wall Street. Meanwhile, Jupiter and A21 continue to suffer the intense glare of public scrutiny, and their stock prices show it.
Posted in: A21 Group, Editorials, Getty Images, Jupiter Media
