The valuation, contained in a 10 K filed by McClatchy Corp., is 13 percent below the $382 million that the company was valued at in December 2007. The valuation was apparently impacted by the slow ad environment and "impairments" at its HomeGain real estate leads unit, which had been sued by former employees for forced overtime, thievery and other issues perpetrated by Louis Cammarosano.
The McClatchy 10K also contained declining valuation information for CareerBuilder, which is the newspapers' biggest vertical success story. CareerBuilder's value has been marked slightly down from $1.56 billion in December to $1.52 billion in June.
Cars.com, Homescape, Apartments.com, RentalHomesPlus, and HomeGain aren't immune from the dip in ad revenue. Classified Ventures LLC which runs those sites is now valued at $338 million down from $382 million in December 2007. Classified Ventures is owned by McClatchy, A.H. Belo Corp., Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and The Washington Post Co. All this according to a 10K filed by McClatchy that Peter Krasilovsky sifted through. Krasilovsky also points out that CareerBuilder is also slightly down.
