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Future plc, the UK’s largest magazine group (and one of the fastest-growing publishers in the U.S.) has announced the acquisition of Dennis Publishing. The purchase price of approximately £300m sees respected print and online brands including Kiplinger, MoneyWeek, The Week and IT Pro join Future’s portfolio.
Commenting on the acquisition, Zillah Byng-Thorne, CEO of Future, said: “I am delighted to announce the acquisition of Dennis, a high-quality portfolio of trusted brands that will accelerate our strategy, enhance our content capabilities and bring additional geographical and vertical revenue diversification, whilst materially increasing the proportion of recurring revenues across the Group.
“The acquisition is highly complementary to our longstanding ‘U.S. first’ mindset and provides an attractive opportunity to scale our recently created ‘Wealth’ vertical, whilst diversifying our presence in our ‘Knowledge’ and ‘B2B Technology’ verticals.”
The full list of brands being acquired are:
- The Week UK / The Week US
- The Week Junior UK / The Week Junior US
- MoneyWeek
- Kiplinger
- Science & Nature
- IT Pro
- Computeractive
- PC Pro
- Minecraft World
- COACH
Writing on his website Flashes & Flames, respected media analyst Colin Morrison said that the acquisition, “Creates the opportunity for Future to grow further and faster in the US and also in financial media. It is also expected to apply its successful e-commerce affiliate marketing skills to the new portfolio.”
The acquisition also brings Dennis’ famed subscription capability, a powerful subscription conversion engine, to Future’s platform – over three-quarters of Dennis’ revenue is derived from its 1.2M subscriptions with subscriber retention rates of more than 85%.
Four Dennis titles are not being acquired by Future – Viz, Fortean Times, Cyclist and Expert Reviews – these will be retained by Exponent private equity which itself had acquired Dennis Publishing for £167m in February 2019.
In addition, Dennis’ motoring portfolio which was spun off earlier this year to create a separate company, Autovia, does not form part of the deal and is expected either to be sold separately or floated in an IPO. Autovia combines AutoExpress, Car Throttle, Carbuyer, Driver Power, evo, Octane, Vantage, Driving Electric with the online sales expertise of Buyacar to drive leads to dealers and car manufacturers.
