Times Mirror Reports 15.3% Gain in Income

Times Mirror Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times and other media operations, reported a 15.3% jump in third-quarter earnings to $74 million as profits improved in each area except cable television.

The company also reported a $17.4-million pretax gain on its recent sale of the Dallas Times Herald to a Texas investor group. That and other one-time gains this year and last had the effect of roughly canceling each other out for the July-September quarter, leaving the media conglomerate with a 14.4 % gain in overall pretax operating earnings to $121.9 million.

“Results from operations, especially in newspapers and professional publishing, improved considerably toward the end of the third quarter,” said Robert F. Erburu, Times Mirror’s chairman, chief executive and president.

Erburu said the “positive trend is continuing in the fourth quarter,” but it will be offset by the loss of investment tax credits and a charge against earnings due to the planned early redemption of debt to obtain lower interest rates.

The affected debt is $65 million in notes issued in connection with Times Mirror’s 1984 purchase of Call-Chronicle Newspapers at 10% interest, a spokeswoman said. The loss of investment tax credits is one result of the federal tax reform legislation signed into law Wednesday.

In addition to the third-quarter gain from the Dallas transaction, in which the newspaper was sold for $110 million, Times Mirror reported an accounting change in its treatment of pension expenses that had the effect of increasing pretax income by $9.7 million.

In the year-earlier period, net income of $64.1 million included a pretax gain of $31.9 million from the sale of Times Mirror’s Hartford, Conn., cable-television system.

Quarterly revenue slipped 2.3% to $697.7 million, a decline that the company attributed to the sale of various assets.

The third-quarter results included those at the Times Herald through Aug. 31 and at the recently acquired National Journal magazine. However, the latest results do not include those of A. S. Abell Co., publisher of the Baltimore Sun, whose $600-million purchase by Times Mirror becomes final during this quarter.

Erburu has said that cash acquisition will have a negative effect on earnings in 1987 that will continue at a diminishing rate through 1990.

Times Mirror said operating profits for its newspaper group increased 17.3% to $72.2 million, books and other publishing operations increased 29.1% to $28.7 million, and broadcast television rose 8% to $14.4 million. Earnings at the cable-television unit fell 48.4% to $5.3 million.

Times Mirror said the cable group’s showing reflected the lack of profits from the company’s microwave operations, which were sold earlier this year.

Among newspapers, improved operating profits were posted by The Times, Newsday, the Hartford Courant, the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., and Southern Connecticut Newspapers, publisher of the Advocate in Stamford, Conn., and the Greenwich (Conn.) Time.