YPG writes down Trader by C$315 million
Canada's Yellow Pages Group has taken a C$315 million writedown on the value of its Trader Media Corp., a story in The Gazette reveals. We reported earlier on YPG's $168 million loss in Q309. Further digging by the Montreal newspaper shows that the collection of vertical publications was the cause of the loss. Trader's 160 print and 20 web properties were down 25 per cent in revenue over the same period the previous year. YPG paid $436 million in 2005 for Trader in Ontario and another $760 million in 2006 for Classified Media Holdings across the country, to dominate the resale auto market the way its Yellow Pages dominate directories. (Note: I had those two transactions backwards in the original post; thanks to Jim LaPalme for the correction.) But a slew of competitors, including Kijiji, have been attacking Trader's market share.
