YPG to Acquire Canpages for C$225M

Yellow Pages Group Canada announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Canpages for an estimated C$225 million. In addition, YPG has secured a deal with ZipLocal to essentially combine its U.S.-based Your Community Phone Book property with ZipLocal.

“The acquisition of Canpages will accelerate our business transformation to the digital world,” Marc Tellier, chief executive officer, Yellow Pages Group, said in a press release. “Canpages has built a strong local search business and we are pleased with the prospects of joining forces. It will give us the opportunity to expand our sales force, online capabilities and customer offerings.”

Formally known as Canadian Phone Directories, Canpages has grown quickly after its owner HM Capital Partners acquired the Canadian operations from Phone Directories Corp. in 2005. Based in British Columbia with 2009 revenues of roughly C$110 million, Canpages expanded aggressively over the past several years through various acquisitions as well as new book launches. One of its acquisitions was ZipLocal in June 2009. Currently, Canpages publishes 84 titles with distribution of roughly 8 million books.

With regard to the ZipLocal-Your Community Phonebook combination, the press release says that it will “take the form of an equity-for-equity swap,” and YPG will continue to own a 35 percent stake in the new entity. YPG acquired Your Community Phone Book from Volt Information Sciences in 2008.

_________

Related: This comes just one week after YPG announced a new logo and identity (shown above) “reflecting its evolution into a performance media and marketing solutions company”. Read the press release here.