Monday, October 02, 2006

$375 million to buy IncesiveMedia

Incisive Media, owner of network of different web sites including several popular ones such as Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies Conferences agreed to a $375Million (USD) buyout deal with Apex Partners on last Thursday.

As reported today by Search Engine Strategies Social Coordinator and PubCon Director Joseph Morin, Incisive Media CEO, Tim Weller made approximately $20.8Million on the deal. Earlier this month, Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan stunned the search marketing world with his announcement he was leaving Incisive and thus stepping down as Search Engine Watch editor and SES conference coordinator as of December 2006.

We think it is not the typical web 2.0 like deal we are witnessing lately and aside the fact that the price represents 20 times their earnings on average, if we got it correctly, is pretty good deal, yet their entire network of web properties are considered used up on the web, i.e. no room for father growth, which to justify this price. No web 2.0 buzz around which to take these properties to the next level and so on.

Apex Partners is a 30-year old global private equity investment group with holdings in the tech, telecom, retail, consumer services, media, healthcare and financial services sectors. It holds over $20Billion in capital and investments.

Some quotes below:
“We feel the next phase in the company's development would be better realized as a well-backed private company, rather than by remaining on the quoted markets," Stephen Grabiner, a partner of Apex Partners, said in a press statement.



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$100M more for DemandMedia

Demand Media, the company pursuing the audacious strategy of buying up a bunch of generic Web sites that have no staff generating real content of their own — to throw advertising on them — has raised another $100 million.

In May, we reported it raised its first $120 million. Lately, though, the company appears to be buying content as well, including acquring Hillclimb Media, a producer of niche web sites.

Some people connect this company that buys web sites to spam and crap content, yet it is worth mentioning due to its ability to raise hundreds of millions to scale up its operations. The company claims to reach more than 40 million people per month through out its web sites.

Fully story

Shutterfly goes public

Shares of Shutterfly Inc. (SFLY), an Internet-based photo storage and printing service, rose as much as 12 percent in their first day of trading. Shares of the Redwood City-based company gained 25 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $15.25 at 2:24 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading after reaching $16.73. Shutterfly sold 5.8 million shares in an initial public offering at $15 each.

As consumers print more digital images on their computers, several companies now offer Web-based services to store, edit and print photographs. Among the biggest are Eastman Kodak Co.'s EasySha re Gallery, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Snapfish, and Shutterfly.

In the era of web 2.0 image sharing, manipulating and storing, including Flickr, it is pretty much surprising fact that this company has raised more than $87M from the public market.