Plaza Seeks Capital for 8-Month-Old Magazine

Plaza Communications Inc., the Newport Beach publisher of two financial magazines, said it will seek “secondary financing” for its 8-month-old Personal Investor magazine and lay off an unspecified number of the monthly’s personnel.

Although Personal Investor’s circulation has expanded to 100,000 nationwide, its losses have exhausted the publisher’s capital and are threatening the profitability of Plaza’s original publication, Register Representative, the company said.

“We must reduce costs to preserve profitability of Registered Representative,” Plaza’s 9-year-old magazine, said Kathy Blank, the company’s controller.

Blank said Plaza is looking at two financing options for the younger periodical: venture capital and a limited partnership. She said four banks and five private investors expressed interest in becoming involved with the magazine after the publisher ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal.

She declined to give an exact figure on the capital sought to sustain Personal Investor, saying that the amount of money offered is secondary to the investor’s intentions. “We’re not just looking for capital at any cost,” Blank said. “We want someone who wants to see (Personal Investor) the same way we want it--a credible, high-class type of operation. . . . We want someone to invest money in the idea (while) we keep control.”

Plaza has already laid off six of its 50 employees and plans to reduce staff further in the sales, advertising and editorial departments of Personal Investor, Blank said.

The publisher’s losses for the first fiscal quarter ending Oct. 1 were $383,884, compared with a quarter loss of $483,000 the prior year. Though losses have been narrowed, Blank said: “The question is, how long do you wish to sustain a loss?”