TEGNA says it will spin off Cars.com and create two independent publicly traded companies, TEGNA and cars.com.
After the two companies are created, Gracia Martore will retire as president, CEO and member of the Board of Directors. She’ll be replaced by Dave Lougee, who will become president and CEO of TEGNA. Lougee is currently the president of TEGNA Media.
“Over the last four and a half years, we’ve taken a series of important strategic steps to increase the value of our businesses, including the acquisition of broadcast stations from Belo Corp. and London Broadcasting, the acquisition of full ownership of Cars.com, and the spin-off of the Gannett publishing business,” said Martore. “The spin-off we are announcing today is the next logical step in our ongoing transformation to best position our market leading businesses and continues our strong track record of creating value for shareholders.”
The split is expected to be finalized in the first half of 2017.
TEGNA owns or operates 46 TV stations in the U.S. The company bought cars.com for $1.8 billion in October 2014.