It is all a game: everyone knows it, and games it their way. And us journos are the chess pieces in that game. Lest you think I have gone off my rockers, I mean the M&A speculation frenzy (See the Daily Candy story this morning).
iVillage, the woman-focused portal, which announced its Q4 earnings Monday, has been on the block for a while (who isn’t?) and now Reuters reports that a second round of bidding will start on it soon…but the story says offers could come in lower than the $700 million or so rumored. Offers may even start at half that price and then range upward, the story says.
A $700 million price would imply an enterprise value of 24 to 29 times iVillage’s EBITDA for 2006, well above the lofty multiples used to value Ask Jeeves, Intermix and About.com, the story says. Based on current share prices (which jumped up since yesterday because of good Q4 results), the valuation would be in the $560 million range.
Among the potential suitors in the latest round: NBC (which hasn’t really done a big acquisition in the online space since its disastrous NBCi move); AOL (both NBC and AOL/TW are on IVIL’s board); Lagardere Media’s Hachette Filipacchi; and possibly from others like Yahoo and Hearst (which already owns 25 percent of iVillage).
More on this later…
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