The CentralNic Group announced on Monday that it is set to acquire VGL Verlagsgesellschaft for a reported enterprise value of €60 million.
The CentralNic Group is reportedly expected to pay an initial consideration of €67 million upon its acquisition of the online marketing company from its present shareholders.
The acquisition is expected to increase the company’s pro forma revenue and EBITDA to $470.5 million and $57.9 million respectively for its results over the financial year in 2021.
VGL reportedly generated $55.3 million of revenue and US$10.9 million of Adjusted EBITDA from 31 December 2020 until 31 December 2021.
CentralNic further announced that it will be raising up to £42 million through a placing of an estimated 35 million new ordinary shares at the expense of 120p per share.
The Company is also set to provide all qualifying shareholders with the opportunity to subscribe for an aggregate of up to 2,500,000 Open Offer Shares.
The move has been announced in an effort to raise up to £3 million, on the basis of 1 Open Offer Share for every 100.46403360 existing ordinary share owned by the company shareholders at the record date.
“The acquisition of VGL is a natural extension of CentralNic’s online marketing business and a major step in adding content-based marketing solutions to its comprehensive suite of services,” said Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNic.
“Millions of customers rely on the value-added content provided by VGL to make informed decisions when purchasing online, leading the world’s foremost e-commerce companies to use VGL for customer acquisition.”
Valentin Dushe, co-founder of VGL added: “We are very pleased to welcome CentralNic as our new shareholder and partner.”
“CentralNic is a highly experienced player in the market as well as the perfect fit for VGL Group, and will support us in executing our envisaged growth strategy on both a national and an international level.”
“We share the same vision and values and strongly believe that not only our users, but also the Company itself stand to significantly benefit from this new partnership.”
AIM-listed CentralNic share price saw a drop of over 6% on Monday morning as the company also released preliminary full year results which saw revenue for 2021 increase by 71% to $410.5m.