How Merrill's timing of its earnings release affected its coverage

Jed Horowitz of Dow Jones Newswires writes Friday afternoon about how the timing of Merrill Lynch’s second-quarter earnings release for late Thursday afternoon affected how the poor results were positioned in Friday’s newspapers.

Horowitz notes that Merrill said it released its earnings Thursday so it wouldn’t conflict with J.P. Morgan’s earnings release on Friday morning.

Horowitz writes, “Indeed, by early Friday headlines about Merrill’s loss were off the front-page Web sites of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’s business section, though Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain came in for some knocks on the inner pages of the papers’ print editions.

“There was nothing Machiavellian in the timing, Thain said in a 6:00 p.m. Thursday evening call with reporters. The company simply wanted to avoid a release conflict with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which beat Merrill to its customary 8 a.m. release time, Thain said.

“The delay was not aimed at giving Merrill additional time to complete more asset sales that could offset its heavy writedowns and avoid a dilutive equity offering, Thain added. Merrill did announce the sale of two businesses for more than $7 billion; the sale of one, its 20% stake in Bloomberg LP to Bloomberg Inc., was widely telegraphed before the report.

“Merrill could have moved the announcement of its results to an hour before or after Morgan’s 8 a.m. release, said an investor relations executive with decades of experience at a Merrill rival, and some financial services firms have resolved conflicts that way. But investor relations professionals worry that dawn releases risk entrusting interpretation of results to inexperienced reporters manning early-morning news desks, while companies fear late-morning releases lead to conference calls during market hours when a slip of the tongue can create havoc with a stock price.”

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