Company further expands its online advertising business with latest acquisition.
CentralNic (AIM: CNIC) announced today that it is acquiring German product review business VGL Verlagsgesellschaft mbH for an initial enterprise value of €60 million. It will pay €67 million upfront and up to €38 million in an earnout if the business significantly exceeds projections.
VGL reviews and compares products and earns affiliate commissions when people buy the products through its links. Unlike many product review websites out there, it seems that this business actually tests products similarly to how Wirecutter does.
The business generated $55.3 million of revenue (unaudited) and $10.9 million of Adjusted EBITDA (unaudited) last year.
In addition to the new revenue source, CentralNic says the acquisition will help diversify who it sells traffic to. Right now, nearly all of its ad revenue comes from Google Adsense. The acquisition will diversify by adding Amazon and others to the mix.
To fund the acquisition, CentralNic issued £42 million of new equity and will sell up to £3 million more.
They should concentrate on their core business: Operating a registry – however, customers in this area are apparently breaking away.