Wide World of Women

Liberty Takes a Beating
Trackers Plunge on Poor 3Q Results
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 10/30/2008 5:13:00 PM

Liberty Media’s two tracking stocks—Liberty Interactive and Liberty Entertainment—tumbled Thursday after the parent company said it would no longer provide earnings guidance and told analysts that the economic downturn has impacted its flagship QVC shopping channel.

Liberty Interactive—which includes QVC—fell 23% ($1.48 per share) to $4.90 each on Thursday after the company released third quarter earnings. Liberty Entertainment dipped nearly 8% ($1.38 each) to $15.94 per share

In a statement, Liberty said that in light of current financial conditions, the company would withdraw Liberty Interactive’s guidance provided in 2006 and “will not be providing new guidance for the foreseeable future.”

QVC reported a 3% dip in revenue in the quarter, to $1.64 billion. Domestic revenue was down 9% to $1.1 billion and adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization fell 21% to $221 million in the quarter.

On a conference call with analysts, QVC CEO Michael George said that while customers are not leaving the home shopping giant, they aren’t buying as much as they used to.

Adding to Liberty Interactive’s problems was the revelation that QVC had drawn down the remaining capacity of its bank credit lines. As a result, Liberty Entertainment will transfer about $551 million in exchangeable debt and $380 million in cash to Liberty Interactive, to help shore up its credit position.

Liberty Entertainment, which includes Starz Entertainment and Liberty’s 50% interest in DirecTV Group, reported a 21% rise in revenue. In September, Liberty said it planned a “hard spin” of the Liberty Entertainment tracking stock, basically converting it into an asset-based security.

At the time, some analysts believed that was a precursor to taking in 100% of DirecTV Group. However, the company cast doubt as to when that “hard spin” may occur.

On the conference call, Liberty CEO Greg Maffei said that the company continues to evaluate the timing of the Liberty Entertainment spin “given market conditions.”

Oh well

The economy has nothing to do with it. People just are waking up and realizing that Quacker Factory just really sucks

ditto,thats just a cop out.qvc needs to stop selling the same crap.

Liberty Interactive Puts The Screws To QVC Customers
Posted by Eric Savitz

Apparently, when the economy is going south, people spend less time buying things they don’t really need from television shopping channels.

That is one of the takeaways from this morning’s financial update from the convoluted empire that is John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp.

The slice of the company known as Liberty Interactive (LINTA) had a pretty miserable day. This is the piece of the company that owns QVC, along with a variety of Web based properties, including Backcountry.com and Bodybuilding.com, along with the company’s 30% stakes in IAC/Interactive (IACI) and its various spinoffs, a 24% slice of Expedia (EXPE) and a 20% piece of GSI Commerce (GSIC). One key reason: QVC’s Q3 revenues were down 3% in the quarter, while OIBDA - operating income before depreciation and amortization - was down 14%. (Liberty Interactive as a whole reported a 2% rise in sales, but a 14% drop in revenue.)

The company said QVC is looking for ways to cut costs and generally spruce up operations as the economy sags; among other things, the company said it is “implementing loss containment strategies on our private label receivable portfolio such as increasing minimal approval scores to obtain credit, eliminating annual credit line increases and reducing credit lines for marginal accounts.”

Liberty also said that in light of financial conditions, it is withdrawing its guidance for the company, and will not be providing new guidance “for the foreseeable future.”

Imagine QVC’s credit tightening moves copied by every retailer in America, and you have a very grim picture indeed for the holiday shopping season.

Do we have an English translation of this available?

You need a better credit score to get a credit card with QVC.



If you have a QVC credit card, you won't get an automatic annual increase in the amount of credit you can borrow. I guess they kept giving everyone a large credit amount you can borrow against and they got burned.



If you don't use the card much or you are late in paying, why keep a large credit line open for you.

I hope this is an acceptable translation.

AH.....in other words, they're going to be managing their credit business in the way they should have been all along. Thank you, Sir!

Now if only the banks would to do that.

Next up: QVC Home Mortgage Company

maybe we should have a write-in campaign suggesting 10% less clothing on some of the hostesseseses and models?

What they could do is combine some of the programmes and have the hostesses model the products



Possibility of "Quacker Factory" meets "Spanx".



Cancel that idea.

One way QVC is dealing with the bad economy:


Television shopping company QVC laying off hundreds of workers

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — Television shopping company QVC is laying off hundreds of employees.

QVC, based in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester, says it laid off 160 workers on Wednesday as it begins a cost-cutting program.

Ultimately, QVC says about 900 jobs will be eliminated over the next 14 months. About 200 new jobs are to be added. The net reduction of about 700 jobs is 5.8 per cent of QVC's U.S. work force.

QVC says the cost-cutting measures will lower its 2009 operating costs by US$30 million to $40 million.

lava lamps, godzilla model kits, and frank zappa cd's i'd be buying....i aint bought jack from them....what i'm i gonna do with an overpriced chinchilla wrap?

perhaps they will lay off Jeanne Bice?

See it's time to get rid of some of the high priced hosts, like Bob Bowersox.
He is only used basically for holiday and weekend shows, and alot of the time he doesn't show up for his own named shows.

Why get rid of 900 jobs so you can bring in 200 more?

Laker it was not the banks fault. They were forced to make bad loans under Clinton.

Then the people that ran Fanny Mae & Max cooked the books so they could get a bonus here and there. The people at the top mady 10's of million of $$$$$$'s.

Bush & McCain tried to put a stop to how Fanny Mae & Max was working, but some on the Dems side blocked it something like 25 times. This is the worse scandal is U.S history when it comes to money. I don't mean to make this political, but unless the real deal gets out, most people will blame the wrong people.

Now some of very same people that ran Fanny Mae & Max are in B.O.'s camp.

They should go bacj to the way it use to be. A host would do 4 hours a day on the same days. That would weed out some of the host. They shold also put a stop at having 2 or 3 host on at the same time. And why bring in 3,4, or 5 models, just to show 1 product in an hour show ? I'm sure they get payed by the hour.

I don't know the facts, but I'll bet that the 900 jobs that were or will be lost were full time and the 200 new jobs will be part time. I may be wrong on this, but I don't think a company has to pay benefits for part timers.

Slowpoke both sides are at fault.


On them going back to host's doing 4 hour shifts.Friday going into Saturday between 2pm-1am they went 2 hours without having 2 hosts.From 8-11pm they had 3 hosts,which is BS.The morning program is the only one i can see having 2 hosts.

Away they could save money is,getting rid of all the guests for sampler type shows and let the hosts do those type of shows by themselves.At one time they didn't need help with those type of shows only would have guests if it was the same product brand for the whole show.