Fairfax Media shares have gone into a trading halt amid reports that it’s about to spin off its profitable Domain property classified site.

“The media giant is seriously considering spinning off Domain into a separately listed vehicle to be run by current Domain boss Antony Catalano,” says the Fairfax-owned Australian Financial Review.

Fairfax told the ASX today it was preparing an announcement about Domain.

In 2016, revenue at Domain grew 32.7% to $296.3 million while the company’s traditional metropolitan media fell 5.4% to $574.1 million.

Fairfax last year wrote down the value of its newspaper mastheads by $989 million, pushing the full year result for 2016 to a net loss after tax of $893.5 million. Revenue was down 2% to $1.830 billion.

Excluding write downs of more than $1 billion, underlying profit was $132.5 million, down 7.6%.

(Disclosure: Fairfax Media owns 100% of Allure Media, the publisher of Business Insider.)

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