Seeking to create a powerhouse in the e-mail services business, J.L. Halsey Corp. will pay $19.5 million in cash for Uptilt Inc., which operates as EmailLabs, a provider of hosted software and services for e-mail marketing, Halsey said today. The company acquired e-mail management services provider Lyris in May for $30.7 million.
"With this acquisition, we become the largest independent, publicly traded e-mail marketing firm,” said Halsey COO Luis Rivera. "The combination of EmailLabs and Lyris, with its ListManager, SparkList and EmailAdvisor products, enables Halsey to offer either installed or hosted software solutions to marketers who require the most advanced e-mail marketing features in the industry."
At the purchase price of $19.5 million, Halsey will pay just over three times EmailLabs’ 2004 revenue of $5.7 million, Halsey said. It noted that EmailLabs’ revenue for the first nine months of this year was about $6.4 million.
The co-founders of EmailLabs, chairman and CEO David Sousa and CTO Adrian Liang, will resign their positions but remain as advisors, Halsey said. But other EmailLabs executives will remain, including Jim Herbold, vice president of sales and general manager; Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing; and director of engineering Akshay Vyas.
“The acquisition by J.L. Halsey enables EmailLabs to invest even greater resources in R&D, feature enhancement and human capital, to further the company's leadership in high-performance hosted e-mail marketing solutions," Herbold said.
Halsey is the successor to a former health services firm, NovaCare, that sold off its assets several years ago. Halsey entered the e-mail services business in May with the acquisition of Lyris, and it hasn’t satisfied its appetite for additional buyouts with its purchase of EmailLabs. “Halsey continues to look for acquisition opportunities in e-mail marketing technology and may also acquire companies in other markets,” it said today.
EmailLabs is not the only e-mail firm to be acquired recently. Last month, Alliance Data Corp., a provider of transaction, credit and marketing services, paid $120 million for Bigfoot Interactive, an e-mail services firm with $30 million in sales.
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