The UK’s leading satirical news website has been acquired by a Bath digital media business after a reverse takeover.
Listed company Polemos has agreed to acquire Bath-based Digitalbox Publishing for a total consideration of about £10 million, which will see it admitted to the London Stock Exchange.
That will allow it in turn to acquire Glasgow-based Mashed Productions, the publisher behind the Daily Mash website and BBC2 show The Mash Report.
The deal will require approval from Polemos shareholders. A general meeting of the company will be held on 27 February 2019.
Digitalbox Publishing, the company behind celebrity news and gossip website Entertainment Daily, generated revenues of £2.3m and profit before tax of £508,000 for the year to 31 December 2017.
Mashed Productions will be acquired for a maximum total consideration of £1.2m. The business reported revenues of £396,000 and a profit before tax of £135,000 for the year ending 31 March 2018.
“This is a great opportunity for the Mash to build on what we have created so far,” said Neil Rafferty, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Daily Mash.
“My co-founder, Paul Stokes, did an incredible job building a profitable business from the ground up.
“Being part of Digitalbox and accessing their commercial and technical expertise, means we can keep building, while our fantastic team of writers continue to produce great content every day.”
James Carter, chief executive of Digitalbox, said: “Our proposed admission to AIM will allow us to realise our ambition to create a market-leading, mobile-first digital media business through a buy and build strategy.
“Through our success with Entertainment Daily, we have a platform through which we can drive traffic and advertising revenue. The platform is scalable and we intend to add new titles to it.
“We are excited to announce that our first planned acquisition will be the UK’s leading satirical news site, The Daily Mash. With ten years of consistent audience growth under its belt and the Mash Report successfully airing on BBC2, it is a brand with huge potential.
“We are very much looking forward to working with the team to help them grow.”