Yep, their stock price didn't crash with the dotcom bubble, they still had time to make adjustments without it being so dire. Their stock averaged about $35 / share, from mid 1997 to mid 2005. They had to take loans from Carlos Slim, and they could have just earlier issued stock with a $7 billion market cap.
Disclosure: I worked at a metro daily (the orange county register) as their first webmaster from 1994-2001.
I was there for the first collapse.