The sale of Apartments.com and the planned sale of Cars.com “shows how upside-down the media business has become,” Lynne Marek writes about a conversation with the investment banker Chuck DelGrande.
“The joint venture’s assets could be worth more than the value of all eight newspapers owned by Tribune,” Marek writes. “The highest price floated for Tribune’s newspaper group, which Tribune plans to spin off as Tribune Publishing Co. later this year, topped out at about $1 billion when it was on the sales block last year.”
Tribune’s 28 percent stake in Classified Ventures is worth about $700 million, William Launder reported in The Wall Street Journal last year. Apartments.com sold for $585 million earlier this month, and some of that cash went to newspaper companies like McClatchy, Gannett and A.H. Belo, as well as Graham Holdings, which used to own The Washington Post. All have stakes in Classified Ventures.
The consortium is looking for “as much as $3 billion” for Cars.com, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
