With a soft advertising environment eroding print-based media companies' valuations, both magazine acquisition activity and deal dollar value in the sector showed surprising strength in the first quarter.
According to New York-based investment bank Whitestone Communications, which tracks M&A activity for its annual Who's Buying Whom report, 25 magazine industry deals occurred in the first quarter compared with 26 in the same quarter last year.
...Whitestone President Baran Rosen doesn't anticipate these results positively affecting the upcoming sales of new economy magazine Business 2.0 and troubled consumer group Emap USA.
"Magazines dependent on the Internet will still have a difficult time," Rosen said.
Overall numbers for Whitestone's three focus areas—publishing, information and training—aren't as rosy. Combined dollar volume swooned 85% from $17.2 billion in 2000 to just $2.6 billion this year.
Rosen said that the large discrepancy in dollar volume can be attributed to there being no megadeals in the first quarter. Even without the AOL-Time Warner merger, Rosen said two categories last year—business, legal and trade books and other consumer media—posted a combined $80 million this year, as opposed to $13 billion last year.
This is an excerpt from an article by Peter Lauria for The Daily Deal; April 30, 2001
