Acquisition

4th May 2006 07:00

Centaur Holdings PLC04 May 2006 Centaur Holdings plc (Centaur) acquires on-line business Centaur, the specialist business publishing and information company, is pleasedto announce that it has acquired the entire share capital of the online saleslead service company Pro-Talk Ltd for an initial consideration of £4 million incash. Further payment of consideration may be made, subject to earnings in thetwelve month periods ending 30th September 2006 and 30th September 2007. Thefinal consideration payable under the earn-out is based on a multiple of sixtimes operating profit and is capped at £14m. Pro-Talk Ltd has developed and currently operates 13 web sites serving specificvertical business sectors, mainly in the engineering, construction and technicalproducts areas. It also publishes regular email newsletters for readers in thesesectors. It currently has circa 170,000 registered readers of these newslettersand receives in excess of 1.5 million unique visitors to its sites each month.Pro-Talk's principal objective is to provide sales leads to companies fromprospective customers. Its profit before tax for the 12 months to 30th September2005, the date of the last published accounts, was £0.15m. The acquisition isexpected to be earnings enhancing in the current financial year. The companycurrently employs 30 staff and is based in offices in Hertfordshire, from whereit will continue to operate. Graham Sherren, Chairman and Chief Executive of Centaur, said: "Search EngineMarketing (see note 3) is by some margin the largest category of onlineadvertising expenditure in the UK and continues to grow rapidly. Pro-Talk istaking advantage of this trend and has developed a successful online sales leadgeneration business that is demonstrating strong growth in its specialistsectors. We believe that we can leverage Pro-Talk's technology and Centaur'sbrands and apply this model both to extend Pro-Talk's success in its existingmarket sectors and to establish a number of additional services in sectors thatare important to Centaur. This acquisition is central to Centaur's strategy aswe extend the range of online services we offer to our specialist businesscommunities. I am pleased that the founders of Pro-Talk, Chris Rand and AndrewPye, will remain with the business. We look forward to working with them todeliver further growth." Chris Rand of Pro-Talk said "We are delighted to be joining Centaur and to havethe opportunity to enhance Pro-Talk's potential by working in partnership withCentaur's market-leading brands." Enquiries:Centaur Holdings plc Graham Sherren Tel: 020 7970 4506 Geoff Wilmot Pro-Talk Ltd Chris Rand Tel: 01462 489070 Gavin Anderson & Company Richard Constant Tel: 020 7554 1400 Robert Speed Janine Brewis Notes for editors 1. Centaur's product portfolio currently comprises 9 weekly magazines, 2fortnightly magazines, 11 monthly magazines, 4 magazines of a quarterly orbi-monthly frequency, 2 monthly newsletters, 27 annual printed products, 19online products or services, 25 awards or other sponsored events, 25 exhibitionsand 90 conferences. 2. Centaur reports its results within 5 distinct business sector segments,namely Legal and Financial, Marketing and Creative, Engineering andConstruction, Perfect Information and Other. The first 3 segments compriseprincipally the following vertical business communities in which Centaurpublishes market-leading magazine titles: Retail Financial Products, LegalServices, Marketing Services, Creative Services, New Media, Engineering, PrivateHomebuilding. Centaur also enjoys strong positions in a number of otherspecialist communities, namely HR, Visual Arts Production, Construction, AntiqueRugs and Textiles, Logistics, Recruitment and Public/Private Finance. Inaddition, it serves the Business Travel community with 3 leading trade shows inthe UK and overseas 3. Search Engine Marketing is a term used to describe the marketinginvestment made by suppliers wishing to attract prospective customers who areactively looking for information using one or more of the available internetsearch engines. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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