Nine-figure Fortune
Meredith also hoping that SI will fetch $150M
BANKERS who are helping to sell the four former Time Inc. magazines that are now being divested by new owner Meredith are telling prospective buyers that they expect to fetch more than $100 million for Time, Fortune and its sidekick, Money — andmorethan$150 million for Sports Illustrated, Media Ink has learned.
Houlih an Lo key is handling the sale of SI while Citigroup is in charge of the sale of the other three titles — signaling that Meredith expects at least twodifferent buyers.
Of the three-title package, Time and Money are the marginal ones. Fortune, with its signature Fortune 500 annual listing and conferences, is the most profitable.
Clearly, Sports Illustrated is the best of the four.
“They think SI swimsuit alone could be a brand,” said one media dealer who has seen the pitch.
Thefour titles are expected to attract manysuitors.
“But it’s not about buying a great asset that is goingtogive you a return on investment— it’s about influence and power,” said one source.
Still, one media dealer thinks getting a bid close to the target price will be tough.
“They can ask those prices, but is it realistic?” one source sniffed. “I think it will be a busted auction, unless some billionaire comes out of nowhere.”
Indeed, Reed Phillips, an investment banker with Oaklins DeSilva + Phillips thinks the most likely buyer is a wealthy billionaire — similar to the people who have snapped up trophy newspapers in recent years.
Some are hopeful that someone like Jeff Bezos,w ho bought The Washington Post for $250 million, comes knocking— although the betting is that the Amazon founder passes onthis one.
Jay Penske, whose Penske Media Corp. just got a $200 million infusion from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund, is looking at someofthetitles — with SI being his most likely target, sources said.
Former mayor Mike Bloomberg, owner of BloombergLP, will notbebidding, one insider said.
Joe Ripp, the former CEO of Time Inc. who is running a small investment company, and Joe Mansueto — the Morningstar billionaire who owns Fast Company and Inc. via his Mansueto Ventures — may be interested in Fortune and Money.
Meredith declined to comment. It has said it wants the titles sold in 60 to 120 days.
Pot is hot
Pot publications are one of the few growth areas in me- dia. High Times Media, which has delayed but not canceled plans to become a publicly listed company, said Thursday it is buying Green Rush Daily for $500,000 cash plus $6.4 million in stock.
GRD, a 3-year-old cannabis news Web site that bills itself as the official resource of daily news for all things weed, claims to pull in 9.5 million page views a month.
Meanwhile, Tom Florio, CEO of ENTtech Media, which last year purchased Paper magazine, said he is teaming with MedMen, a recreational marijuana company, to launch Ember, a custompublished print title.
Florio is handling the content for the custom-published quarterly distributed only in MedMen’s dispensaries in California and Nevada. MedMenwill soon open a medical marijuana store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
High Times is in the process of being acquired by Origo Acquisition Corp. in a $250 million all-stock deal.
Origo is a special purpose acquisition company, also known as a blank check company, because it raises money and then hunts for a worthy acquisition target.
Origo zeroed in on High Times last July with the plan to start publicly trading in October. But that deadline has been extended. Edward J. Fred, chairman of Origo, said he now expects to complete the deal on or before June 12.
The delay is due to problems getting the privately held High Times to adapt to public reporting requirements.
“Adam Levin will continue to run High Times,” Fred said.
Williamson out
Atlantic Media is cutting ties to conservative writer Kevin Williamson as a contributor — only a week after hiring him—due to his controversial comments on abortion and capital punishment.
Williamson, an anti-abortionist, said he felt the procedure should be treated as a homicide and women who have one should be hanged.
In a September 2014 podcast unearthed by Media Matters and posted online Wednesday, he was quoted as a saying, “And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, ‘If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.’ And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mindwas hanging.”
Jeff Goldberg, the Atlantic editor-in-chief, who was standing by the controversial writer initially, reversed course after hearing the full ppodcast. “The language he used in this podcast — and in my conversations with him in recent days — made it clear that [his comments in an earlier] tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views,” the editor said.
“Kevin is a gifted writer, and he has been nothing but professional in all of our interactions,” Goldberg said. “But I have come to the conclusion that The Atlantic is not the best fit for his talents, and so we are parting ways.”