Is CNET about to be taken over?

 

According to New York Times, a consortium of CNET investors, led by large investment funds such as Jana Partners, are seeking to take over CNET’s board of directors. The consortium has a 21% stake in CNET’s ownership, and they’ve sent a letter with their plan to the CNET board approximately two weeks ago, but CNET has been silent so far, supposedly preparing to put up a fight against this initiative.

Although CNET hasn’t commented on the proposal directly, they’ve issued a statement on Saturday, claiming that the company has “made significant strategic, financial, personnel and operational progress.” However, Wall Street analysts don’t seem to agree: their almost uniform prediction is that CNET shares will slump, continuing the trend that has been going on for the last three years, in which the shares have lost 19% of their value.

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CNET buys FindArticles for a cheap $20.5 million

 

LookSmart has sold FindArticles.com property to CNET in an all cash transaction valued at approximately $20.5 million.

FindArticles.com houses approximately 11 million resource articles from over 3,000 sources, including leading magazines, journals, trade publications and newspapers. The site lets users browse articles dating back to 1998 by category or by specific publication name.

“The sale of FindArticles.com improves the Company’s overall financial position, and enables us to focus and streamline more effectively on building value in our core advertising network and publisher services operations,” commented Ted West, Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer. “Our strategy is to focus on the needs of advertisers and publishers in order to position the Company for future growth and profitability. ”

“CNET Networks understands that access to premium content is critical for our users' online media experience,” said Neil Ashe, CEO of CNET Networks. “The addition of this high-quality content from leading independent publishers allows us to further improve the experience for our users.”

 

 

Based on the high traffic figures, this looks like a cheap acquisition for CNET, based on US unique monthly traffic, the sale values each user at just under $3. This is certainly at the low end of valuations. The price is likely to reflect the lack of recent growth.

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