Beat the crowd

Two articles in today's AFR talking about the resurgence in book sales over the last two years and how wrong the prediction of the death of printed media has been...

These issues will imo support the outperformance of PMP over the next couple of years: 1) The major supermarkets etc know that nothing beats direct advertising (mail in the letterbox) as and advertising medium and this is going to continue (that why we get so much of it!); 2) book sales are growing (the above two articles provide a lot of background to this); 3) consolidation in a fragmented industry that has wrongly written off by most (faddish) fund managers (but not some astute value investing institutions; 3) PMP's balance sheet and financial outlook is improving dramatically (net debt zero by the end of this calendar year, capital management initiative foreshadowed {read buyback} later this calendar year, buyback of convertible notes next year; recommencement of dividends; 4) industry will become recognised as sustainable into the future and companies such as PMP will be re-rated (in the context of fewer large players with better economies of scale).

All imo and I am talking my own book.. One of the safest bets on the ASX imo..

Happy to hear different views... cheers...