(BRK.A), (BRK.B)
Move over Snooki! The Jersey Shore is the latest target for Berkshire Hathaway’s growing newspaper empire.
BH Media Group is continuing its expansion in small and medium-sized markets with the acquisition of the newspapers and publications of the Catamaran Media Group.
Catamaran publishes 12 weekly papers, with circulations ranging from 7,000 up to 15,000, serving the southern New Jersey shore area. While the individual circulations are small, the combined circulations exceed 111,000.
Also, acquired from Catamaran by BH Media Group are the SandPaper and Free-Time publications, which are weeklies covering Cape May, Ocean City and the greater area during the summer tourist seasons. The two publications have a combined circulation of 60,000.
In 2013, BH Media Group acquired a 50% interest in Catamaran when it purchased 100% of The Press of Atlantic City, a daily paper serving Atlantic City, New Jersey. The newspaper has a daily print and online readership of 273,000.
Mark Blum, The Press of Atlantic City’s publisher, will add the duties of publisher of the Catamaran publications to his duties.
Growth Strategy
BH Media Group continues to look aggressively for additional print media properties. It shuns the major markets, with Buffett having shown no interest in bidding for the Washington Post, which went to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for $250 million in the fall of 2013. Instead, BH Media prefers to pick off the smaller markets that collectively having millions of readers and millions in revenues.
In addition to the publications acquired from Catamaran, BH Media Group owns 69 newspapers and publications located in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and New Jersey.
To read a Special Report on BH Media Group’s revenues and acquisition strategies see BH Media Finds Multiples Success.
© 2014 David Mazor
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.