ImpreMedia Acquires El Mensajero In San Francisco.

ImpreMedia, LLC announced the acquisition of El Mensajero, the San Francisco Bay Area’s #1 Spanish language newspaper. The acquisition was made with proceeds of an $82.5 million credit facility with Goldman Sachs Specialty Lending Group, L.P.

“We are pleased to add El Mensajero to our company,” stated John Paton, Chairman and CEO of ImpreMedia. “By adding the San Francisco Bay market we can now provide advertisers with a footprint in four of the top 10 markets, representing over 35% of the U.S. Hispanic population, or almost 15.5 million Hispanics. We also open the door to greater cooperation between El Mensajero, which is distributed weekly in Northern California, and La Opinion, the nation’s largest Spanish language daily newspaper, which serves Southern California.”

“We are really excited by the opportunities that ImpreMedia provides for our readers, advertisers and employees,” stated Brad Westerhold, Publisher of El Mensajero. “They share our commitment to the Bay Area Hispanic community and to locally produced, high quality, Spanish language journalism.”

“California is home to more Hispanics today than any other state and the number of Hispanics living in California has increased by more than any other state. We are thrilled to have a partner like El Mensajero help us serve this large and rapidly growing market,” stated Monica Lozano, Senior Vice President of ImpreMedia and Publisher and CEO of La Opinion. “The ability for newspaper advertisers to directly reach Hispanics in both Northern and Southern California through one Spanish language buy is an opportunity whose time is long overdue.”

“ImpreMedia’s newspapers and customized sales programs offer national advertisers the ability to bring their message to millions of Hispanics with a reach and cost that is competitive with both English and other Spanish language media,” stated Erich Linker, Senior Vice President National Advertising. In the Los Angeles market, for example, according to Scarborough
Research, the average issue of La Opinion reaches more people than one prime time ad on the local Univision station, three times as many people as one prime time ad on the local Telemundo and Telefutura stations combined, and more people than one drive time ad on each of the top four Spanish language local radio stations combined. “It is for reasons like these that ImpreMedia has grown its national and overall advertising revenues this year at a rate that is in line with Spanish language broadcast and several times faster than the general newspaper market,” added Mr. Linker.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.