Cramer: Gannett Should Acquire Monster Worldwide (MNST)

Tonight on CNBC’s Mad Money, Cramer’s first message was for Gannett (GCI-NYSE): he said that they should go out and acquire Monster Worldwide (MNST-NASDAQ) to save the company.  It is in the perfect position to be bought by Gannett, and if not Cramer thinks that Yahoo! (YHOO-NASDAQ) could go out and acquire it.  He said it’s a double takeove candidate.  As a newspaper company, Gannett is locked into a long slow death march, and Gannett is the largest holder in CareerBuilder.com and Monster fell sharply after its shortfall.  This would let Gannett become the hands down #1 online job search company.  There is also a new CEO that actually orchestrates buyouts of the companies he joins.  Monster also made it on Goldman Sach’s list of best candidates for "private equity targets."  He thinks that the mid-$40’s right now would be worth multiples more if this one got bought at old multiples, but you might not want to spend too much time thinking about that. Tribune (TRB-NYSE) and McClatchy (MNI-NYSE) are the other owners of the competing CareerBuilder.com.

Monster traded down 0.95% to $43.96 in normal trading, but shares are now up close to 2.5% at $45.00 since Cramer noted this is a takeover candidate.  This one lost 11% when it warned on April 4, 2007.

Jon C. Ogg
April 17, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.