The publisher of USA Today and many other publications reported second quarter results this morning that easily topped estimate. Gannett Co. ( ) was expected to post earnings per share of $.36, but the actual results came in 10 cents ahead of those projections. Gannett has not beaten estimates by this wide margin in quite some time. Revenue was slightly lower than expected; sales slumped to $1.41 billion or a decline of 18% from a year ago. In addition, the company also revised an earlier write-down upward, and this combined with the earnings beat propelled the stock higher by nearly 30%. Make no mistake, the problems in the newspaper industry are real and quite serious. However, for Gannett much of the possible bad news has already been priced in, as GCI came into the day trading for less than 3x expected earnings for this fiscal year.
