@ Jefferies Internet Con: Susan Lyne, CEO, MSLO; More Digital M&A; Emeril ‘Great Fit’
By Joseph Weisenthal - Wed 27 Feb 2008 11:51 AM PST
Last December at MediaWeek, MSO CEO Susan Lyne said her company was interested in making investments in the online wedding space. It didn’t take long for that statement to be realized, having recently announced a 40 percent stake in WeddingWire, likely leading to the acquisition of the whole company. At the Jefferies Internet Conference, Lyne once again said the company is interested in more digital M&A, but this time, she wouldn’t specify a specific area. Afterwords, she said that her comments last time got too much play. During the Q&A, an investor asked whether the company was interested in areas like user-gen and social networking, to which Wenda Harris Millard, president of media, responded: “If we don’t address all of those things, then we can’t be a contemporary company.” So expect to see more there.
-- Emeril: Lyne: “A great fit… we know how to grow a personality-driven brand.” As for the finances behind it, CFO Howard Hochhauser: “Economically speaking, it was about $50 million deal for about 6x EBITDA. From a CFO’s perspective, it’s a beautiful deal.”
-- WeddingWire: Lyne: “(It’s) a significant part of our efforts to accelerate development of the weddings franchise… Readers come to us for ideas an inspiration, but now as we built out weddings online, they’ll be able to come to use and enjoy a great set of planning tools.” As the company suggested on its recent conference call, the WeddingWire platform will be extended into other verticals.
-- Ad market: Not much new to say since their recent earnings and conf. call, though Millard did make a point about the advantages of the company’s “omni-ness”—basically, ad buyers are quicker to cancel single platform purchases—buys that are solely online or solely in the magazine. But they’re less likely to pull out of multi-platform deals, giving MSO a degree of stability.
Posted in: VC+M&A, Mergers & Acquisitions, Conferences
