It’s a Texas company again
Management leads a buyout of Gulf Publishing Co., an oil voice since 1916
It missed the Spindletop gusher, but the Gulf Publishing Co. was around to document most of the other big moments in the oil industry over the past 100 years. The publishing firm, launched in 1916 as prospectors were finding oil along the newly built Houston Ship Channel, is becoming a Texas company again.
A management-led buyout has purchased the company for $18 million from London-based Euromoney Institutional Investor, which had owned the firm since 2001. The publisher will be headquartered in Houston.
John Royall, chief executive officer of Gulf Publishing, Russell Denson, a Houston investor who once worked for the company while a college student, and other employees joined with Main Street Capital Corp. to buy the company. Main Street, a Houston private equity firm, provided the financing and took an ownership stake.
Royall said the purchasing price of the publishing company, its four magazine brands and online data services would have been higher if the oil industry wasn’t struggling with low prices.
“This is a good time to buy,” Royall said in his corner office on Greenway Plaza as employees were gearing up for the upcoming Offshore Technology Conference.
A major hurdle to completing the deal, in the works for six months, was obtaining financing. Royall said that East Coast investment bankers were reluctant to finance the acquisition because they don’t know the energy industry, other than the headlines of turmoil they’ve seen. But Main Street Capital, which is familiar with the ups and downs of the oil market, was much more comfortable with the investment, he said.
Royall showed off old bound copies of the journals that spanned the history of the oil industry, from some of the first big gushers in Texas to the growth of oil in Saudi Arabia to the latest in drilling technology.
One 1970 “World Oil” issue, for example, featured a spread on the then one-yearold Offshore Technology Confewrence. That conference featured technical sessions on marine geology and platform design, 500 vendor booths and a cocktail party at the downtown Rice Hotel for participants. The company
owns four magazine-style publications.
In addition to World Oil, which has 44,000 subscribers, it also publishes Hydrocarbon Processing with 30,000 subscribers, Gas Processing with 17,000 and Petroleum Economist with 4,000.
The company also provides industry data online, which reaches two to five times more readers than the print publications.
The company also hosts industry conferences that focus on technical issues. Plans are in the works to do more, Royall said. He also plans to launch more subscriber-only online databases, expanding current offerings that include a compilation of ongoing petrochemical, refining and gas processing projects around the world.
The trade journal business is a good one, he said. Readers who subscribe to the journals are dedicated, want highly technical information about the industry and are willing to pay for it. And manufacturers and suppliers are willing to spend money on advertising to reach the small but important group of engineers, plant managers and other decision-makers who read the journals.