Japanese news and information company Uzabase is selling its online business news website Quartz to the management under CEO Zach Seward, who says he will be seeking further funding for the business.
Quartz was founded in 2012 by Atlantic Media and bought by Uzabase in 2018 for over $86m. Although the terms have not been disclosed this time, the New York Post suggests that the price may have been nominal. Indeed, Uzabase is also reported to have provided a $6m loan to the MBO team.
Quartz has been heavily lossmaking and reduced its headcount by 40% to 110 earlier this year.
For the first half of 2020, its total revenue fell from $11.6m to $5m as a result of advertising losses. For the whole of 2019, revenue had fallen by 22% to $27m and the EBITDA loss was $18.6m – almost twice that of 2018. For 2020, Quartz is expecting $1.9m in revenue from its 20,000 subscribers.
We wonder if Vox, Axios or MorningBrew/ Business Insider (which all know how to make newsletter profits) will step in to help? Or are those costs (including people in the US, UK, Hong Kong, India and Africa) just too high?
