Costa Mesa Publisher Goes for $25 Million : British Firm Buys ‘Let’s Rent’ Magazines
Pacific Media Group, a 4-year-old Costa Mesa company that publishes six advertising magazines for the apartment renatal market, has been sold to the British media conglomerate United Newspapers PLC for more than $25 million.
Pacific Media publishes six editions of “Let’s Rent” magazine in California and also owns a subsidiary that distributes various advertising publications to supermarkets and shopping malls. The company, founded in 1985 by one-time real estate broker Barron Ressler, had pretax profits of $3.1 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1989, according to United Newspapers.
The high price paid for the company illustrates the tremendous growth in the market for free publications that target specific advertisers such as car dealers, supermarkets and apartment owners. Such publications have increasingly challenged daily and weekly newspapers for local advertising dollars.
United Newspapers owns three national daily newspapers and a host of regional and specialty publications in the United Kingdom, and in recent years has expanded aggressively in the United States. Current U.S. holdings include the trade publishing house Gralla Publications, the PR Newswire, Miller Freeman Publications, and Diversified Communications Inc. of Seattle.
Diversified Communications--purchased by United Newspapers last year for more than $15 million--publishes “For Rent” magazine in 16 cities throughout the United States. That firm will now assume management responsibility for Pacific Media. Officials at the Seattle company did not return calls seeking comment on their plans.
The “Let’s Rent” publications consist entirely of paid advertising placed by apartment complex owners and property management companies. Ressler started the firm on a shoestring in 1985 and was the only employee for eight months, but the company grew rapidly along with the booming real estate market in Orange County and elsewhere in the state.
United Newspapers said it would pay $25 million in cash for Pacific Media, with a further amount of up to $5 million payable if Pacific Media meets certain, unspecified, profit targets between now and the end of the year. Ressler and United Newspaper officials could not be reached for comment.
