Postmedia to sell Infomart business to Meltwater for $38 million

Postmedia will sell its Infomart business to media intelligence firm Meltwater for $38.25 million.

Postmedia said it will use proceeds from the transaction to pay down debt, the company said in an announcement Thursday. The sale is expected to close on Aug. 15.

Meltwater is acquiring Infomart’s media monitoring business, which consists of the company’s database of Canadian media content, as well as a service that provides corporate customers with a direct feed of stories that interest them, and a professional services operation that provides custom-designed content analysis.

Postmedia will retain the FP Advisor business, which is a suite of corporate and financial data products.

Andrew MacLeod, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Postmedia, said data tracking and analysis has become a large global business. Postmedia wouldn’t have the ability to invest in the R&D needed to compete with global players, such as Meltwater, he said.

“It’s difficult for a company like ours to match that because it’s not our business and we don’t have the same customer set on a global scale,” MacLeod said. “It’s not our core business.”

It therefore makes sense for Postmedia to sell Infomart for an attractive multiple and use the proceeds to pay down debt, MacLeod said.

Meltwater was established in Sweden back in 2001 by chief executive Jorn Lyseggen. The company now has 1,500 employees at 55 offices around the world. It established a U.S. presence 10 years ago and set up shop in Canada in 2008. It currently has offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

“We actually felt that Canada was very similar to Scandinavia — you know, well behaved, cool people, and the weather was very similar to what we had. In Canada, we were very successful from the get-go,” Kaveh Rostampor, North American head of Meltwater, said in a phone interview.

Meltwater, which describes itself as a media intelligence company, does more than offer customer access to news databases. Because the online world is flooded with so much information from conventional and social media, Meltwater uses tools to sort through it all and distill it into information its customers can use to make business decisions, Rostampor said.

Earlier this year, Meltwater bought an artificial intelligence company called Wrapidity which automatically extracts data from web content. And earlier this month, Meltwater acquired a social media analytics platform called Klarity.

Rostampor said Meltwater is committed to growing its footprint and becoming a leading media company in North America. Canada, in particular, is a market where Meltwater believes it can deliver “significant value” to clients, he said.

“We can bring to the Canadian market the best of two worlds,” Rostampor said. “We can provide Canadian companies a leading and successful platform, and we can now combine that with the deep experience and strong content that Infomart is bringing.”

Postmedia will continue to contribute content to Infomart after the deal closes, MacLeod said.

“It’s an ongoing relationship,” he said. “We’ll be continuing to license our content to them.”

We can provide Canadian companies a leading and successful platform, and we can now combine that with the deep experience and strong content that Infomart is bringing.” Kaveh Rostampor, North American head of Meltwater