Future has swooped for the bulk of Dennis Publishing in a £300m takeover to bolster its B2B, wealth and tech titles.
Kiplinger, MoneyWeek, The Week and IT Pro will join Future, which has already this year acquired GoCo Group, owners of the Go Compare price comparison site, and has added MarieClaire.com to its portfolio.
The addition of finance brands Kiplinger and MoneyWeek accelerates the scale of Future’s Wealth vertical, the company said in this morning’s announcement.
The publisher now aims to use its existing expertise in audience growth and GoCo’s ability to monetise sales of financial products to support the delivery of a new, highly targeted, and lucrative ‘Wealth audience’ for brands.
The Dennis takeover also sees Future expand its ‘Knowledge vertical’ with the addition of The Week and Science & Nature.
Meanwhile IT Pro, coupled with TechRadar Pro and ITProPortal, is meant to bring scale to Future’s lead generation business in the growing B2B tech market.
As well as the introduction of new brands to the Future portfolio, the acquisition brings Dennis’ leading subscription capability, a powerful subscription conversion engine, to Future’s platform.
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
The four titles not being acquired by Future are Viz, Fortean Times, Cyclist and Expert Reviews. These will be retained by Autovia, which separated from Dennis earlier this year.
Zillah Byng-Thorne, CEO of Future, said: “The materially earnings enhancing acquisition is highly complementary to our longstanding ‘US 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.
“I look forward to welcoming our new colleagues to Future, and to continuing the successful execution of our strategy to generate long-term sustainable growth and attractive returns for our shareholders.”
Private equity firm, Exponent acquired Dennis in 2018 from the estate of Felix Dennis in partnership with an accomplished management team, led by CEO James Tye.
Tye said: “In the three years that the business has been owned by Exponent, Dennis has been on an incredible growth journey, delivering double digit increases in subscription revenues, a greatly increased US footprint; and significant bottom-line increases.”
