Reviewing Lee Enterprises (LEE) and Its Peers

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Lee Enterprises and its peers gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Lee Enterprises	$532.42 million	-$25.84 million	-3.31
Lee Enterprises Competitors	$3.18 billion	-$9.58 million	13.47

Lee Enterprises’ peers have higher revenue and earnings than Lee Enterprises. Lee Enterprises is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Profitability

This table compares Lee Enterprises and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Lee Enterprises	-7.21%	-325.44%	-6.55%
Lee Enterprises Competitors	-19.12%	-47.36%	-5.21%

Volatility and Risk

Lee Enterprises has a beta of 0.35, indicating that its share price is 65% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Lee Enterprises’ peers have a beta of 1.02, indicating that their average share price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

39.2% of Lee Enterprises shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 39.1% of shares of all “Media” companies are owned by institutional investors. 54.2% of Lee Enterprises shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 17.8% of shares of all “Media” companies are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Lee Enterprises peers beat Lee Enterprises on 6 of the 9 factors compared.

Lee Enterprises Company Profile

Lee Enterprises, Incorporated provides local news and information, and advertising services in the United States. The company offers digital subscription platforms; daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers and niche publications; and web hosting and content management services. It also provides advertising and marketing services, such as audience extension, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, web and mobile production, social media services, and reputation monitoring and management. In addition, the company offers integrated digital publishing and content management solutions for creating, distributing, and monetizing multimedia content for media publications, universities, television stations, and niche publications. Further, it provides commercial printing services; distributes third party products; and operates a digital marketing services agency. Lee Enterprises, Incorporated was founded in 1890 and is based in Davenport, Iowa.