IMAC to invest £7m in Review Centre Ltd
13 June 2008
Ingenious Media Active Capital (''IMAC'') has today completed an investment of £7 million in Review Centre Limited (''Review Centre'') a newco set up to acquire Resource Team Limited (''RTL''). RTL's main asset is a well-established user-generated review website, Review Centre (www.reviewcentre.com) which generates revenues from pay-per-click advertising. IMAC's investment will give it 71.5% of the shares of the business.
IMAC in partnership with a new management team has acquired RTL from its founder in a management buy in (MBI). The MBI team is led by Nick Hynes as Non-executive Chairman and Glen Collins as CEO. Nick Hynes was until recently CEO of Searchworks, the search engine marketing agency, and prior to that headed Overture, Yahoo's search advertising business. Glen Collins is a career online marketer who founded and sold online marketing and web development agency, Digital Outlook. Founder Paul Nadin will exit the business to concentrate on new opportunities.
Review Centre was established in 1999 by Paul Nadin to enable internet users to post their product reviews on online bulletin boards. It now provides more than 180,000 reviews across a very broad base of different products split across seven channels: automotive; electrical; entertainment; finance; lifestyle; sport and travel. In 2002 it switched its business model to a pay-per-click model, significantly enhancing revenues. Since then the business has grown steadily as a result of additional revenue streams including display advertising and online lead generation. In the financial year to August 2007 Review Centre had a turnover of £2.1m and EBIT of £1.2m.
Sanjay Wadhwani, Director of Ingenious Ventures, said:
''I'm delighted to make this investment which taps into the trends in user generated content and online marketing. Review Centre has shown impressive top line growth in the last couple of years due to its success in driving traffic through search engine optimisation, and the effectiveness of its pay-per-click model. However it has the potential for so much more. Our aim is to become the destination of choice for consumers researching their purchasing decisions. Nick, Glen and the team are perfectly placed to take the business to the next level.''
Nick Hynes, Chairman of Review Centre, said:
''Review Centre has been one of the innovators amongst online review sites and so I'm very excited to be given this opportunity. Our team's online marketing experience will help drive increased growth for the business, while we are looking to enhance the revenue generated per user through improving advertising revenues. Our future plans for the business include international expansion and bolt-on acquisitions.''
Enquiries:
Ingenious Ventures, Manager to IMAC
Patrick McKenna
Sanjay Wadhwani
Patrick Bradley
Tel: +44 (0)20 7319 4000
Fishburn Hedges, PR advisor to IMAC
Andy Berry
Paul French
Tel: +44 (0)20 7839 4321
Landsbanki, NOMAD and Broker to IMAC
John Craven
Fred Walsh
Tel: +44 (0)20 7426 9000
About IMAC:
Ingenious Media Active Capital Limited is an investment company which aims to provide investors with capital growth from equity or equity related investments in predominantly unquoted media and entertainment companies. IMAC is an initiative of, and its investments are managed by, Ingenious Ventures which is the private equity division of the Ingenious Group and a trading division of Ingenious Asset Management Limited.