Investments

Investments in Joint Ventures

As of December 27, 2015, our investments in joint ventures consisted of equity ownership interests in the following entities:



Company	Approximate % Ownership
Donohue Malbaie Inc.	49	%
Madison Paper Industries	40	%
Women in the World Media, LLC	30	%

We have investments in Donohue Malbaie, Inc. (“Malbaie”), a Canadian newsprint company, Madison Paper Industries (“Madison”), a partnership operating a supercalendered paper mill in Maine (together, the “Paper Mills”), and Women in the World Media, LLC, a live-event conference business.

Our investments above are accounted for under the equity method, and are recorded in “Investments in joint ventures” in our Consolidated Balance Sheets. Our proportionate shares of the operating results of our investments are recorded in “Loss from joint ventures” in our Consolidated Statements of Operations and in “Investments in joint ventures” in our Consolidated Balance Sheets.

In 2015, we had a loss from joint ventures of $0.8 million compared with a loss of $8.4 million in 2014. The improvement reflected an impairment charge in 2014 related to our investment in Madison, as well as increased income from our investment in Malbaie, which benefited from the impact of a significantly weakened Canadian dollar. This was partially offset by losses from our investment in Madison, which continued to face declining demand for supercalendered paper and was at a competitive disadvantage to Canadian mills selling paper to the United States, which benefited from the Canadian dollar value decline.

In 2014, we had a loss from joint ventures of $8.4 million compared with a loss of $3.2 million in 2013. During the fourth quarter of 2014, we recognized an impairment charge of $9.2 million for our investment in Madison. Our proportionate share of the loss was $4.7 million after adjusting for tax and the allocation of the loss to the non-controlling interest.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, we completed the sale of the New England Media Group and our 49% equity interest in Metro Boston, and classified the results as discontinued operations for all periods presented. See Note 13 for additional information.

Malbaie & Madison

We have a 49% equity interest in a Canadian newsprint company, Malbaie. The other 51% is owned by Resolute FP Canada Inc., a subsidiary of Resolute Forest Products Inc. (“Resolute”), a Delaware corporation. Resolute is a large global manufacturer of paper, market pulp and wood products. Malbaie manufactures newsprint on the paper machine it owns within Resolute’s paper mill in Clermont, Quebec. Malbaie is wholly dependent upon Resolute for its pulp, which is purchased by Malbaie from Resolute’s Clermont paper mill.

Our Company and UPM-Kymmene Corporation, a Finnish paper manufacturing company, are partners through subsidiary companies in Madison. The Company’s 40% ownership of Madison is through an 80%-owned consolidated subsidiary. UPM-Kymmene owns 60% of Madison, including a 10% interest through a 20% noncontrolling interest in the consolidated subsidiary of the Company.

We received no distributions from Malbaie in 2015, $3.9 million in 2014 and $1.4 million in 2013.

We received no distributions from Madison in 2015, 2014, or 2013.

We purchase newsprint, and have purchased supercalendered paper, from the Paper Mills. Such purchases aggregated approximately $12 million in 2015, $20 million in 2014 and $21 million in 2013. Effective February 2015, we no longer purchase supercalendered paper.

Cost Method Investments

The aggregate carrying amount of cost method investments included in “Miscellaneous assets’’ in our Consolidated Balance Sheets were $11.9 million and $10.0 million for December 27, 2015 and December 28, 2014, respectively.