Details

Titel

The Half-Year in Review: MA

Ist Teil von

• MIN's B 2 B, 2007, Vol.10 (27)

Ort / Verlag

Potomac: Access Intelligence, LLC

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Quelle

Business Source Ultimate

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The other hefty transaction was Source Interlink's $1.2 billion purchase of Primedia's enthusiast division (min's b2b of 5/21). Although not B2B, this was a transaction that B2B M&A players watched closely. Roland DeSilva of DeSilva + Phillips said, "They've...seen value...greater than what many other bidders saw." Tad Smith, CEO of Reed Business Information, said, "They're going to have to have enormous synergies to make up that value... And synergies don't just happen. It's going to take a lot of hard work." Scott Peters, a managing partner at JEGI, said, "If you put it all together, it shows a fairly attractive acquisition model. Obviously, there's a lot of work to do in proving that all out." We left it to The minsider to sort it out: "The 70-odd magazines and ancillary properties would (should?) go for around $800-900 million. The reported asking price was 'around $1 billion.' And one source speculated that they heard that the next highest bidder was close to $800 million." There were, however, smaller deals of interest. 1105 Media opened the year with back-to-back-to-back acquisitions of Post Newsweek Tech Media from The Washington Post Co., Fawcette Technical Publications, and The CPM Group (min's b2b of 1/8). Neal Vitale, CEO of 1105, has been living up to his given name in 2006's min magazine as "The Dealmaker": "We've grown about 50% since we started. We'll continue to grow as much as we can." After announcing its intention to make an IPO in February (min's b2b of 2/12), on May 18, TechTarget successfully offered 7.7 million shares on Nasdaq at an initial price of $13. The stock rose to $14.79 (up 14%) by close. As we went to press, the stock was trading at $12.25. B2B media hasn't traditionally done well on the open market (Penton, Ziff Davis, to name two), but TechTarget isn't traditional B2B media. Private equity groups that have recently invested in B2B watched the IPO closely, as it represents a possible exit strategy for their investments 3-5 years down the road. Tom Kemp, a managing partner at VSS, said, "There hasn't been a great track record of success for B2B media companies going public. It would be a good thing from an industry standpoint for this to be successful."