Be it modesty or the bind of confidentiality provisions, Derek Handley, who co-founded The Hyperfactory with his brother Geoff, has always been coy about what US media outfit Meredith Corporation paid for his company.
But ratting around a transcript of Meredith's September 2010 quarter conference call, I did find a hint of what the US company paid for the New Zealand-founded mobile advertising outfit.
Meredith's CFO said:
During the quarter, we also invested approximately $25 million in acquisitions, which included our purchase of the mobile marketing specialist, the Hyperfactory, and the final contingent payment for social media agency New Media Strategies [which Meredith originally bought into in 2007].
No other major acquisitions seem to have closed during the quarter.
Meanwhile, an article in respected industry journal Advertising Age article indicates that the New Media Strategies deal closed in 1997. As much was widely reported. The new bit of info offered by the Age is that the deal included a $US2.5 million earn-out clause, which was paid to New Media Strategies staff (as a reward for sticking around) at the start of the September quarter.
That means Meredith could have paid up to $US22.5 million to acquire the 80.1% of The Hyperfactory it did not already own (it bought a 19.9% stake in 2009).
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A $US22 million payday for The Hyperfactory?
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