Espotting Sold to Find What?

[sandi]

Haven't managed to verify this one yet, and nothing on the Espotting site to confirm it, but the Times Business supplement today stated that Espotting has been sold for $161 million to Find What....anyone heard anything else about the going's on there?

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<added>
[biz.yahoo.com...]
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[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 1:03 pm (utc) on June 18, 2003]

[engine]

Ya, there's no comment from espotting at the moment but sandi is correct that it's reported in the Times newspaper for $161Million for cash and shares.

[sandi]

not that I could find....sources say that there will be a PR release this afternoon, so just need to hold tight till then.

[lazerzubb]

If it's true i see it more like a merger, a company that has a market cap of $256.5M does not buy another company for $161 M i must say it also sounds like A LOT of money for a company Espotting's size.

[Shak]

No body is responding from Espotting, NO Comment I think is the word.

The deal, revealed in The Times this morning, was struck this week but official confirmation is thin on the ground, since neither company was quite ready to announce the move to the markets - FindWhat.com is listed on the NASDAQ exchange

[netimperative.com...]

Shak

[lazerzubb]

Yeah i was right on the merger:
[biz.yahoo.com...]

Interesting from Article:

Combined group would service approximately 40,000 advertisers and is expected to generate combined revenues of over $140 million in 2003

From Annual SEC for FIndwhat [biz.yahoo.com]

Revenue was approximately $42.8 million for the year ending December 31, 2002

This would mean Espotting stood for a large amount of the revenue in 2003, my guesses more than findwhat stood for.

From first Q report this year:

Revenue was approximately $15.8 million for the three months ending March 31, 2003

And from Second Q estimates [biz.yahoo.com]

The Company announced that it believes revenue in Q2 2003 will be over $17.0 million, versus Q1 2003 revenue of $15.8 million

[edited by: lazerzubb at 11:59 am (utc) on June 18, 2003]

[Tor]

Lazerzubb:

..a company that has a market cap of $256.5M does not buy another company for $161 M...

Why not Lazerzubb? I`ve seen examples of companies been taken over, and where the overtaking company is even smaller than the entity they are buying.

[TravelSite]

Reading the above links it looks like FindWhats existing share holders will own 70% of the new company, while Espotting Shareholders will own about 30%. Seems a good move - Espottings founders get paid nicely from the deal, and (along with its shareholders) retain a large stake in the new company. Espottings Shareholders can now reach into the US, FindWhat Shareholders extend now reaches into Europe. And Espotting doesn't really "sell out" as such to Yahoo or Overture (which I'm sure its founders will be happy about).

Sounds a good move all round for Espotting and Findwhat.

[Tor]

Sound a good move all round for Espotting and Findwhat.

From what I can see at this point it is a balanced and good deal for both the companies. This has really been an eventfull year so far when it comes to moves in the SEM-market. I wonder what comes next?

[novatech]

[espotting.com...]

Press release from espotting above.

;)

[webdiversity]

Novatech beat me to the punch by a minute.

[webdiversity]

Interesting to see that Espotting will survive the transaction so I guess that means the name of the new company will be Espotting?

[TravelSite]

Very Good timing by Espotting. Googles new Adsense product could be seen as a threat to it as espotting probably depends on lots of its smaller lower quality 'partner' sites showing its ads (is this correct?). If so Googles adsense could enourage such sites to abandon espotting in favour of Adsense, thus potentially lowering espottings value.

[Rumbas]

Now on FindWhat as well:
[findwhat.com...]

[henrikt]

I don't think Google's AdSense would have been a threat to Espotting, as AdSense shouldn't be used on search answer pages. Espotting was rather a direct competitor to AdWords. Their partners were/are mainly top tier search engines and portals in Europe.

[TravelSite]

henrikt

True - I hadn't considered that (though you do get espotting category/content matches on kelkoo). Im fed up seeing google-advertised espotting partner sites - at least we wont see google advertised google partner sites :)

[dougs]

The deal is $27 million in cash the rest in shares.

Doug

[Shak]

Daniel Ishag, a founder of Espotting told Reuters the combined firm will be able to cross-sell technologies to clients on both sides of the Atlantic.When asked about the takeover speculation of the new firm, he said: "Together, I would say we look very attractive."

OK, so I got it WAY WAY wrong about Yahoo buying them, and will be paying out on my bet tomorrow :(

However the above quote makes some deep reading

Shak

[GoogleGuy]

Neat--congrats to FindWhat and Espotting. I'm not sure if I've met anyone from FindWhat, but I've met a few of the Espotting folks and they were very nice.

[max_rk]

everyone was expecting something like that to happen. The PPC and search engine landscape changing fast as it has always been.

Interesting to see how findwhat.com and epotting.com going to re-brand and if.

[Blue Gravity]

Is it just me or does it boggle your mind on how much some "websites" are worth these days. Some of these sites are worth more than offline corporations that have been around for more than 20 years!

[johnraphone]

Is it just me or does it boggle your mind on how much some "websites" are worth these days. Some of these sites are worth more than offline corporations that have been around for more than 20 years!

Well, if a company brings in more revenue and has a higher demand then its off line counter part then it will sell for more money.

[chrisuk]

I think it will certainly make the top end of the market more competitive. Its interesting also how the new deal will prevent any one distribution partner from accounting for more than 10-15% of revenue. So if a distribution deal goes sour the business is not affected too much which has always been something that must hang over any ppc with large distribution partners.

I think it is good also that Espotting is retaining its business name and not being sold outright, the new board being comprised of key people from both companies.

I think also if cpc prices for competitive keywords start to rocket then advertisers with smaller budgets will turn to some of the smaller ppcs providing they can offer good roi.

It will be an interesting year.

[TinkyWinky]

"..a company that has a market cap of $256.5M does not buy another company for $161 M... "

Yep fraid that has no real bearing - I know a company of capitalisation £0.6m that paid over £5m for a competitor recently - very bad but it was though for a range of reasons far to dull for this thread!

I think this could be a very good thing - big question is whether Yahoo now waits in the wings until the integration is complete and then steps in to purchase therefore saving years of development to get it's own ppc!

Could be interesting times - seems Kanoodle just didn't cut it despite the reciprocal between them both for a couple of years!

:)