Online media company in Northern Europe for sale

• Revenue: > 150M EUR
• EBITDA: < 10M EUR
• Employees: > 600
• Location of the Online media company: Northern Europe
• Reason for sale: The company is not actively for sale, but open to speak to suited strategic buyers
• #CFIE ITS193

The company for sale is a large organization that can be an interesting investment opportunity. The owners of the company are not looking actively for sale, but open to speak to suited strategic buyers or PE groups that have deep experience with and appreciate digital platforms. The company is transforming from a traditional media company into a company with various digital platforms. The suited buyer can be a large media company that has limited experience with digital platforms. This interested seller can help to grow the experience in this field. An ideal buyer is a European media company that is a supplier of solutions and services to other media companies. In this way the current products of the company can sold to other players as well. CFIE has no sell-side mandate and is not likely to get one. Hence, the buyer needs to be open to give a buy-side mandate to CFIE.

The company for sale has many years of experience in the media and owns more than 50 daily newspapers, free newspapers, sites, digital platforms (apps, web TV, webshop), radio, direct mail, digital start-ups, printing and distribution businesses. The company is also employing more than 700 employees specialized in various media and business fields. The company has a history of being a traditional local news media company whose activity is composed in 2 parts: a B to C component (the subscription business) and a B to B part (the advertising business). In the present this media organization has made in a big proportion the transformation from being a traditional print based company to a truly digital company. Compared to many other traditional news media companies in the region, it has come quite far, but there is still a way to go. The content presented on its platforms shows that the company provides high-quality journalism with a local perspective and is focused on enabling society to gather more knowledge and to grow dialog and democracy.

As a digital transformation strategy, the company has adopted 4 pillars on which it focuses. First is the digital paid content which supposes to develop a digital subscription business based on local journalism and taking into consideration useful data, algorithms, state-of the-art digital platforms and excellent local journalism. The second pillar represents the digital ads and the aim is to develop a digital advertising business by using data, programmatic solutions, advanced technical tools and platforms. An important aspect here is to offer the advertisers good value for their investments. The third pillar regards the transformation of print and it is referring to adjust the costs for the print business to the decreasing print revenues. The last pillar it is about the consolidation of the business, to continue to manage the costs for printing, distribution, IT-development, digital development and to build a more powerful advertising business on the national level. Key factors in the digital development is to continue to develop the subscription business both to increase the number of subscribers but also to gather data to expand the advertising business. As a consequence of its actions towards digital transformation, the company has recorded in the recent years a very good development of the digital revenues.

The company developed a digital ecosystem of numerous platforms that enable customers to read news in the local area. Due to the digital tools, the company is able to facilitate the sale of the content presented both for BTC and B2B segments.

• The company is a large media organization in Northern Europe
• The company has successfully moved from printing to digital media
• The company can help a buyer that has limited experience with digital transformation