Westwood One to Avoid
The value guy in me always awakens when I see a stock scratching at multi-year lows, and Westwood One (NYSE: WON) piqued my interest a couple weeks ago. It declined from more than $30 two years ago to around $11 today, trading at about 11 times 2006 earnings. That’s cheap — but is it cheap enough? At first, the company seemed very appealing: It pays a nice 3.7% dividend, and its small capital expenditures help it generate a lot of free cash flow. In addition, Sirius (Nasdaq: SIRI) and XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR) are its friends, not foes. Westwood One doesn’t own radio stations; it creates content like traffic updates and Jim Cramer’s radio show, selling those shows to both terrestrial and satellite radio stations.