Centaur buys B2B marketing support firm, sells Home Interest portfolio
The acquisition of MarketMakers, which offers marketing support services to B2B clients, and sale of B2C portfolio Home Interest signals focus on B2B at Centaur.
Marketing Week publisher Centaur Media has acquired B2B marketing support services provider MarketMakers and announced the sale of its Home Interest portfolio to Future as it looks focus its efforts on B2B products and services.
Centaur, which also owns The Lawyer, Creative Review, Design Week, Money Marketing and Econsultancy, will pay the owners of MarketMakers an initial £13.4m.
Future is paying £32m for the Home Interest portfolio, which includes Homebuilding and Renovating magazine and show and was the only consumer brands business in Centaur’s portfolio.
Portsmouth-based MarketMakers offers marketing support services to B2B clients. Its telemarketing, data analytics database enrichment and automated lead generation services will be used to develop client relationships across its portfolio and will also be used to accelerate the growth of Centaur’s digital subscription services. Centaur’s products, services and capability will also be offered to MarketMakers’ client base.
Centaur CEO Andria Vidler says: “These transactions are a major step forward in the continuing transformation of Centaur into a B2B focused business, providing our increasingly professional customer base with a range of higher value-added products and services.
“It is the right time for our Home Interest portfolio business to fulfill its potential under new ownership and we wish the management team every success
“MarketMakers is the premier business of its kind, led by a talented team with a blue-chip international customer base. We believe the business is a natural fit – an entrepreneurial, ambitious company that puts the needs of customers front and centre. It brings a rich array of products and services to Centaur, which we will be offering to our customers, while at the same time exposing MarketMakers’ extensive customer base to Centaur’s products and services.”
Centaur has been looking to move away from being a pure-play publisher reliant on advertising and recruitment revenue. In September 2016 it acquired brand consultancy Oystercatchers.
MarketMakers generated revenue of £11.4m in the year to 31 December 2016. Pre-tax profit was £1.4m.
The Home Interest Business generated £12.9m in revenue and pre-tax profit of £1.3m.
