2014-08-06

Gannett Acquires 73% of Cars.com for $1.8 Billion in Cash

Who needs a new gTLD domain name? No one, including Gannett:

Gannett is splitting into 2 companies--one for newspapers (stable to dying) and the other holding digital assets (cars.com and careerbuilder.com) and broadcasting properties--and also announced it was acquiring the "73% interest it does not already own in Classified Ventures LLC, which owns Cars.com, for $1.8 billion in cash" which tells you how valuable some of the "digital business assets" are and the dominance of the .COM extension for business domain names, notwithstanding .car and .cars and .auto and .autos and other ICANN nonsense.

Gannett Company, Inc | Investor Relations | News Release | gannett.com: "... Gannett is acquiring full ownership of Cars.com – a leading destination for online car shoppers... It is now the #2 auto-related site with approximately 30 million visits per month, and annual visits have grown at a rate of 17% for the last several years. Since its inception, Cars.com has grown consistently, and today the site displays approximately 4.3 million new and used cars from nearly 20,000 dealers... The automotive sector is the single largest and most important vertical for local advertising revenue, and Cars.com is one of the few proven and established digital solutions of scale in this market. Gannett will enter into new 5-year affiliate agreements with the existing owner-affiliates of Cars.com upon the closing date... The transaction is expected to contribute approximately $155 million in annual incremental 2014 pro forma EBITDA to Gannett, which includes the impact of the new affiliate agreements... The Digital business will consist of several other well positioned and growing online companies in addition to Cars.com. The largest is CareerBuilder [careerbuilder.com], a global leader in human capital solutions majority owned by Gannett, that provides services ranging from labor market intelligence to talent management software and other recruitment solutions. It is the largest online job site in the U.S., measured both by traffic and revenue, and has a presence in more than 60 markets worldwide..." (read more at link above)





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