Future plc to Acquire Consumer Division of AnandTech Publisher Purch
by Ryan Smith on July 18, 2018 8:00 AM ESTIn a change of pace from the usual, we have some news about ourselves this morning.
Future plc, a competing UK publisher, has announced that they will be buying the bulk of Purch, AnandTech’s publisher. The deal will see Future acquire Purch’s publisher services division (ad sales) along with the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) group. The vast majority of Purch’s publications – and essentially anything that you might read – are organized under the B2C banner, including AnandTech, Tom’s Hardware, and Space.
The deal is valued at $132.5 million USD, and is expected to close on August 31st. As Purch is a privately held company, the deal has already been approved by Purch. Meanwhile Future will be seeking shareholder approval to issue new shares to pay for the acquisition.
Once it closes, the acquisition will see all of Purch’s B2C brands joining Future’s existing brands across the globe. In the technology space this includes TechRadar, GamesRadar, and PC Gamer. Ultimately Future is looking to strengthen their own technology publishing services, and this deal is expected to make them the top tech publisher in terms of comScore rankings.
Speaking off the cuff here, at this point I have not been informed of any acquisition-changes planned for AnandTech. We remain a strong site in traffic and the depth of our editorial content, and I do not see that changing. In the meantime as the deal moves towards closing, I'll be sharing any new and relevant details with you, our loyal readers.
Purch Announces Sale of Consumer Brand Portfolio and Technology Platform
Business-to-Business Division to Pursue SMB Market Opportunity with Business.com.
NEW YORK, July 18, 2018 — Purch, a digital publisher and marketplace platform, announced today the agreement to sell its U.S.-based Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business unit and all associated brands and services to Future US, Inc., a subsidiary of the publicly traded UK-based media company, Future Publishing Ltd. The sale includes the Purch brand along with the full portfolio of consumer brands, including Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware, TopTenReviews, ShopSavvy, Live Science, and Space.com. The sale also includes Purch’s innovative yield optimization platform, RAMP, and its associated licensing business. The existing Business-to-Business (B2B) unit will move forward as Business.com, renamed after the B2B business’ marquee brand.
“As CEO, it’s been a thrilling and rewarding experience to help guide the development of Purch as a leading marketplace-centered publisher. Our focus on content and commerce and the development of proprietary monetization technology enabled us to build a diversified and profitable business, while avoiding the challenges of ad-dependent publishing models. We are joining forces with a like-minded publisher with strong complementary assets. Future’s acquisition of the B2C business unit is an opportunity to grow Purch more rapidly and to realize its full potential,” said Greg Mason, Purch CEO.
“The acquisition of Purch’s consumer division, with its leading titles, such as Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide and Space.com, gives us market-leading authority in the US, helping us deliver on our mission to be a global platform for specialist publishing. I’ve been impressed by the strength of Purch’s technology platforms and the expertise of its people. Together, we will build a combined organization that has scale and growth opportunities ahead. The two businesses share similar cultures – we both share our audiences’ passion, we’re data-driven, ambitious and both have an innovation-led mindset. I look forward to welcoming our new Purch teams on board at Future,” added Future CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne.
The sale is expected to close in August.
The remaining B2B business unit, now named Business.com, will continue to focus on developing its unique marketplace-centered business model serving the small- to medium-business (SMB) community. Already a large and profitable business, Business.com and its portfolio of related brands now have the opportunity to further expand the content and services they offer to small business owners, arguably the largest and most important segment of the U.S. economy.
The B2B business has grown considerably from when Purch acquired BuyerZone in 2014, followed by the Business.com brand in 2016. Its service-oriented digital platform provides SMBs with the advice and tools they need to grow their businesses to the next level, and the company has plans to significantly expand the services it brings to its millions of members.
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Media Contact:
For more information, please contact Régine Labossière at Goodman Media International, rlabossiere@goodmanmedia.com, 212-576-2700.
About Future:
Future plc is an international media group and leading digital publisher, listed on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR). The Group operates two separately managed brand-led divisions: Media and Magazine. The Group has a reach of 100m+ globally, including 62m online users and 63m social media reach.
The Magazine division is brand-led. It has over 100 market-leading publications, with 10 key titles.
The Media division focuses on being at the forefront of digital innovation, in particular, the high growth technology and games markets, with three complementary revenue streams: eCommerce, events and digital advertising. It has a number of leading brands including TechRadar, PC Gamer, What Hi-Fi?, Louder, The Photography Show, Generate, The Homebuilding and Renovating Show and the Music Week Awards.
About Purch
Purch is a digital publishing and marketplace platform uniquely positioned at the intersection of content, commerce and customer. By combining in-depth product reviews, comparisons and services with industry-leading publisher technology, Purch creates a seamless connection between intent-based buyers and sellers. The company generates more than $1 billion annually in facilitated commerce through its tech, shopping, lifestyle and SMB brands, including Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware, Top Ten Reviews, ShopSavvy and Business.com. With more than 1,200 product categories, Purch is the #1 source for buying advice for more than 100 million people each month. To learn more about Purch and its owned-and-operated sites, please visit www.purch.com.
Source: Future plc
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alphasquadron - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
Do you want more content, or deeper content but less of it? We get requests for both>Wow I find it hard to believe that people request more content and are okay with less technical articles. At that point there is no difference between Anandtech and the multitude of other tech sites spitting out content hour by hour. Why don't those people visit engadget or the 20 other similar tech sites? Why change the one site that does not focus on that? Basically I'm asking the readers that want tons of content every hour, What's wrong with you?
Impulses - Friday, July 20, 2018 - link
Agreed.Zandros - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
I really miss the in-depth Apple content and reviews. Most other sites just restate Apple's PR content in different ways, but AnandTech usually had info I couldn't read anywhere else (like the SoC architecture articles). Now we don't even get reviews of the phones.drexnx - Thursday, July 19, 2018 - link
considering where Anand and Brian Klug (as far as I know) work now, is that such a huge surprise they used to have a heavy Apple focus?s.yu - Saturday, July 21, 2018 - link
I'd appreciate any digging on the major SoCs, but I don't really care about iPhone reviews. First is that there's no shortage of them, second is that Anandtech could only do a little more variable control with more comprehensive sampling, definitely more informative but may not be fundamentally different from some other sites which do phone reviews very well and in detail like GSMArena.s.yu - Saturday, July 21, 2018 - link
I would really be interested in a look into GPU Turbo when you guys come around to it:)...but it's shaping up more and more to be like some sort of Vulkan implementation.
yannigr2 - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
You need 100 people to cover today's tech news. It's not easy. And while usually a newsposter/reviewer will make a list of, let's say, 10-20 things he wants to post/review, in the end he will have time to post/review only 2 or 3 of them. It's just normal to see phrases like the one you posted "Its been a busy week, we hope to have it reviewed by.."And let's be fair here. We want Anandtech to become a non stop tech portal full of reviews and news articles? Ad blocking extensions will have to close in this site. People WORK at Anandtech, don't post stuff because they are millionaires and have plenty of free time.
Jon Tseng - Thursday, July 19, 2018 - link
Yeah... Just carry on what you're doing Ian its good for me.My tip: Write the articles other people aren't doing (Techspot does this well w their legacy roundups). Focus on depth rather than being first to spam. Best J.
Alistair - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
I disagree also ;)Jhlot - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
Bummer, its never good when one company owns a huge portion of the news in a market or topic area.