Acquisition of Beach Magazines and Publishing Ltd
12th January 2005
The Future Network plc (‘Future’), the international special-interest consumer magazine group, today announces that it has acquired Beach Magazines and Publishing Ltd. (‘Beach Publishing’) for an initial consideration of £1.5m in cash and up to a further £1.5m in cash, deferred for one year and subject to the business meeting certain targets.
Beach Publishing was founded in 1998 and today publishes three titles: Junior, Junior Pregnancy & Baby and Wedding Day. Turnover for Beach Publishing for the year ended 31 December 2003 was £3.1m and operating profit was £0.2m.
Junior, Beach’s first title, was launched in 1998 and claims to have redefined the parenting magazine sector with its high production value approach. Junior Pregnancy & Baby was launched out of the Junior brand as a bi-monthly in spring 2003, aimed at brand and fashion-conscious pregnant women and new mothers. It moved to a monthly frequency in July 2004
Wedding Day was acquired from Crimson Publishing in May 2003 and repositioned as a high-end product to complement Beach’s other titles. Aimed at fashion-conscious brides, it targets the trend towards women getting married later and the ever increasing amounts spent on weddings. Wedding Day is a bi-monthly publication with an ABC of 31,679.
No major changes are planned for the editorial content of any of these magazines, which will continue to be run by founder Chris Taggart. They will be published from Beach’s current offices in West London for the foreseeable future. All three titles are firmly established and Future anticipates that its strong newsstand presence should help to drive further sales growth.
Commenting on the acquisition Greg Ingham, Chief Executive of The Future Network plc said:
“This acquisition fits very well with our diversification strategy. It opens up new growth sectors for us to enter and brings us new audiences and advertisers. We also see significant opportunities for the titles in overseas markets. Beach’s approach is very similar to our own, namely publishing high quality, special-interest magazines with narrow but deep content. We are delighted to welcome the publishing and editorial teams to Future and to add these titles to our growing magazine portfolio.”
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