Hyderabad: Indian digital marketing and advertising firm Ybrant Digital has announced acquiring three US-based firms belonging to the UK-based company Experian for $175 million, making it its largest ever acquisition.
Ybrant has a track record of eight acquisitions including the search engine firm Lycos for $36 million. The three firms being bought now include PriceGrabber into online comparison shopping, LowerMyBills into personal finance and ClassesUSA into educational services.
With the latest buys, Ybrant becomes the world's second largest digital marketing and advertising company in the $70 billion global market after the US-based ValueClick that reported $560m of sales last year.
ET broke the story on 7 March that Ybrant was on the verge of making its largest ever acquisition for around $200m with the target firms into comparison shopping, personal finance and educational services with combined sales of around $300 million.
Ybrant chairman and chief executive Suresh Reddy told media on Thursday that the three entities being now acquired have combined sales of $283 million. The combined sales of Ybrant and LGS Global, the listed entity now being merged into Ybrant, are pegged at around $250m, taking the total size of Ybrant post latest acquisitions to around $533m.
Reddy said of the $175m consideration, the company will pay around $100m through cash and around $75 through seller notes to be paid over a period of three years. Ybrant has already tied-up with ICICI Bank and Credit Suisse for the $100m bridge loan, which will be cleared by raising equity funds through QIP/FCCB issue sometime during the year.
Ybrant expects the merger process with LGS Global to be completed over the next 2-3 months, upon which the lenders will extend $100m bridge loan to part finance the latest acquisitions.
The Hyderabad-based firm had so far raised over $100m of funds from global private equity players including Oak Investment Partners, GE Asia Pacific Capital, a Boston based large mutual fund among others.
Others private equity players who had invested in the company include Avenue, Passport Capital, Venus Capital, Delaware State Capital and Eight Capital. It had raised $48m, largest ever in one go, in January last year through a mix of debt and equity from Oak Indian Investment, Asia Pacific Capital and ICICI Bank to fund expansion including inorganic growth.
On Thursday, LGS Global stock fell by around 2% at Rs 90 on BSE, the day the exchange's benchmark Sensex lost 59 points to close at 16,420 points.
No comments:
Post a Comment