Paid-listings providers FindWhat and Espotting agree to merge
Fort Myers, FL-based search engine FindWhat.com today announced a merger with European-based Espotting Media Inc. The merged company will serve the U.S. and 10 European countries with 40,000 advertisers and have combined revenues of $140 million. The companies provide paid-listing search results. FindWhat.com and its private-label partners such as Terra Lycos’s Lycos.com and HotBot distribute to Internet users. The FindWhat.com Network includes CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, NBCi, MetaCrawler, Dogpile, Go2Net, and Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch.
Espotting stockholders will receive approximately 8.1 million shares of FindWhat.com common stock and approximately $27 million in cash. At FindWhat.com’s closing share price on June 17, the transaction values Espotting at $163 million (Euro 138 million).
The companies say they expect the merged business to achieve 30-40% revenue growth and 40-50% pre-tax income growth in 2004, “reflecting significant potential in each entity’s markets plus the expected benefits of the merger.”
“This announcement changes the landscape of the paid listings industry, creating a new international leader,” said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, chairman and CEO of FindWhat.com. “The proposed merger intends to capitalize on both companies’ experience in serving advertisers and distribution partners of all sizes, across the widest geographic footprint in our sector.
Both companies operate online marketplaces that connect the consumers who are seeking specific goods and services with the advertisers that provide those goods and services. Online advertisers determine the per-click fee they will pay for their advertisement, bidding against each other for particular keywords or phrases.
FindWhat.com was formed in March 1998. Revenues have grown from approximately $450,000 to over $42 million in 2002. Espotting was formed in February 2000, and launched its service in the UK in September of that year.
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