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US - Job boards announce M&A activity amid earnings reports

November 11, 2013

Monster Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: MWW) sold a minority stake in a Korean job board while Dice Holdings Inc. (NYSE: DHX) announced a deal to acquire onTargetjobs. Information on the transactions came out amid third-quarter earnings announcements by U.S.-based publicly traded online job sites that also include LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) and CareerBuilder.

New York-based Dice announced it acquired onTargetjobs from private equity firm Warburg Pincus for $50 million in cash. The acquired job sites include HEALTHeCAREERS for healthcare recruiting, Hcareers for hospitality market jobs and BioSpace for recruiting life science professionals.

However, onTargetjobs wasn’t the only recent acquisition for the company. Dice reported businesses acquired over the past 12 months were a driver of the company’s 9.5 percent year-over-year increase in revenue during the third quarter to $52.6 million.

Dice had acquired The IT Job Board in July 2013 for $12.2 million plus a deferred payment of $4.6 million; it also acquired WorkDigital in October 2012 for $10.0 million in cash plus deferred payments totaling $10 million.

Still, third-quarter net income at Dice fell 35.8 percent to $7.1 million.

Monster Worldwide Inc. reported last week that it sold a 49.9 percent stake in its JobKorea site for $90 million to H&Q Korea. Monster also reported that it is expanding its joint venture with Alma Media, a digital services and publishing company in Finland, the Nordic countries, the Baltics and Central Europe. Monster will have a 15 percent stake in the joint venture with an opportunity to increase the stake to 20 percent.

Separately, Monster announced third-quarter revenue fell 10.9 percent to $196.8 million. The company reported revenue stabilized in its “careers-North America” segment. Third-quarter revenue in that segment fell 5.1 percent to $109.6 million. Third-quarter revenue in Monster’s “careers-international” segment fell 20.2 percent to $69.1 million.

Monster also reported stabilization of demand in North America.

Monster reported third-quarter net income of $11.3 million compared with a net loss of $194.2 million in same quarter last year. The company had reported a loss from discontinued operations of $235.4 million in the third quarter of last year.

In addition, Monster announced that Jim Lanzalotto was named senior vice president of staffing and healthcare sales for the U.S. Lanzalotto appeared on Staffing Industry Analysts' Staffing 100 list in 2012.

LinkedIn’s third-quarter revenue rose 56 percent to $393.0 million. The company’s talent solutions segment — which includes its recruiter product and job listings — posted a revenue increase of 62 percent to $224.7 million.

However, LinkedIn posted a net loss of $3.36 million compared with net income of $2.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

CareerBuilder is reported within newspaper publisher Gannett Co. Inc.’s (NYSE: GCI) “digital segment,” which includes CareerBuilder, ShopLocal, Reviewed.com and PointRoll. Gannet reported digital revenue rose 5.2 percent in the third quarter to $191.4 million. “The increases reflect strong revenue growth at CareerBuilder as it continues to build market share in the U.S. and its international operations,” according to Gannett’s 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“In addition to expanding the reach of its job posting business globally, CareerBuilder is focused on aggressively building out its talent management software,” said Gannett President and CEO Gracia Martore in conference call with analysts. “It also sold more than 1,000 talent networks to customers around the world over the last two years, clearly differentiating itself in the market with its big-data solutions.”