Martin Lewis lands £87m from website sale
MONEYSUPERMARKET.COM has announced that it is to buy MoneySavingExpert, the money advice site set up by personal finance expert Martin Lewis, for up to £87m.
MoneySavingExpert was founded in 2003 by Mr Lewis, who will remain as editor-in-chief of the site. He has also announced plans to donate £10m of the proceeds to charity.
According to Google Analytics, the MoneySavingExpert site attracted around 39m unique visitors and 277 million page impressions in the year ended 31 October, 2011.
It also made revenues of almost £15.8m and earnings before tax, interest, depreciation and amortisation of £12.6m.
The MoneySavingExpert website offers free online services, including information to its users, which MoneySavingExpert has researched on all aspects of persona finance.
Mr Lewis, 39, who was born in Manchester and grew up in Delamere Forest, also writes a blog on the site and provides advice on topical subjects such as financial education in schools and reclaiming payment protection insurance.
The deal involves a cash payment of £35m upfront by Ewloe-based Moneysupermarket. It will also issue 22.1m MoneySupermarket shares to Mr Lewis and pay up to £27m more to Mr Lewis in deferred consideration based on future performance of the site.
Moneysupermarket will fund the deal from its existing cash resources and a new £20m bank loan. It said the deal is expected to be earnings-enhancing during its first full year of ownership of the site.
Peter Plumb, Chief Executive Officer of MoneySupermarket, said: “We’ve worked closely together for years with the common goal of helping customers save money. By joining forces we can get more people to save more money.”
“We’ll help MoneySavingExpert.com reach a wider audience and MoneySavingExpert.com will broaden the range of advice and tools we offer.
“MoneySavingExpert.com is rightly trusted by its users as a unique source of independent information and views in today’s complex financial world. We are committed to maintaining its trusted, independent, reputation.”
Mr Lewis said: “This is great news for MoneySavingExpert.com and its users, ensuring, with or without me, the site will be around for many years to come, maintaining our ethos of ‘cutting your costs and fighting your corner’.
“MoneySavingExpert.com has become part of people’s daily lives, far bigger than the man who founded it, and now is the right time for it to stand on its own two feet.
“I chose MoneySupermarket to work with as I know and trust them. They understand the site, as they’ve shown by agreeing the Editorial Code, which ensures our content can proudly remain editorially independent and free from commercial considerations.
“In keeping with the site’s aims, when the deal completes, £10 million will go to charity, including £1 million to Citizens Advice, which is facing terrible funding cuts.”
