Exclusive - Cars.com investor Gannett mulls bid for entire company: sources

(Reuters) - Gannett Co Inc, one of the newspaper owners of Cars.com, is exploring a bid for all of the auto sales website and has discussed teaming up with private equity firms in a deal that could reach $3 billion (1.7 billion pounds), people familiar with the matter said.

Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, is one of the five newspaper publishers that back Classified Ventures, the entity that owns Cars.com. Cars.com helps people buy and sell cars on the Internet.

Gannett wants to be part of any future deal involving Cars.com, either by leading a buyout or rolling over its existing equity stake to support a deal, one of the people said. Gannett has a 27 percent stake in Classified Ventures.

While Gannett's deliberations and discussions with private equity firms are at an early stage, its interest in a deal underscores the company's efforts to diversify beyond print toward television and digital platforms.

The sources cautioned that a Gannett bid for Cars.com may not materialise and asked not to be named because the talks are private. Representatives of Gannett, Classified Ventures and Cars.com did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; additional reporting by Liana Baker and Jennifer Saba in New York; editing by Matthew Lewis)