J2Global, the LA-based information and service company is to spin-out its Consensus (eFax) business and rebrand the media business as Ziff Davis once more. It will remain on Nasdaq.
The re-formed Ziff Davis will focus on digital media and e-commerce in targeted verticals with a billion dollar war chest for potential acquisitions. ZD will own the media brands of the current J2 including PCMag, news and entertainment site Mashable, and video games brand IGN.
The current CEO of J2, Vivek Shah (ex president of Time and Fortune magazines) led a MBO of the original Ziff Davis in 2010, purchasing the publisher for less than $25m. He helped to sell the company in 2012 to j2 Global for $167m and was appointed CEO of the parent company in 2018. He said the spin-off would simplify the business for investors. He owns less than 2% of the company and will remain CEO of Ziff Davis.
J2 has spent $2.5bn on acquisitions since 2013 giving the business a current market cap of $6.25bn. Shah, who is expected to look for acquisitions within the travel, transport and personal finance sectors, said: “Ziff Davis has a long and distinguished history, including a remarkable digital transformation over the past decade. Ziff Davis has always been recognized as an innovative leader in vertical markets, a highly successful acquirer of businesses, and home to some of the industry’s best talent.”
He’s right, Ziff Davis is a legendary media industry brand.
It was founded by Bill Ziff Sr with Bernard Davis. His son Bill took over the business on his father’s death in 1953. The younger Ziff built two magazine groups spanning cars, sports, and computing. The publicity-shy Bill Ziff Jr has been described as “one of the great architects of special interest publishing”. And, perhaps, he was also the first magazine industry billionaire.
In 1978, he sold his specialist consumer magazines to CBS for $700m when he was diagnosed with cancer and told he had only a few years to live. <Through a succession of deals, the former Ziff magazines became Diamandis, Hachette Fillipacchi – and Hearst which acquired Elle, Woman’s Day, Car & Driver and Road & Track and other magazines in 2011. Bonnier had, meanwhile, acquired Ziff’s former flying, photography and boating magazines.>
But the publicity-shy Ziff didn’t slow down for a minute. The man whose Popular Electronics cover story on the Altair computer in 1975 had inspired the 19-year-old Bill Gates to get into programming, piled into tech media. By 1994, Ziff’s seven computer magazines had advertising revenue of $700m and three million readers in the US alone. His 1m-circulation PC Magazine had ad revenue of $280m making it the largest computer magazine in the world and the ninth largest magazine of any kind in the US. Along the way, he built many of the travel industry information businesses that now comprise the Northstar Travel Group.
A full 16 years after his terminal diagnosis, Bill Ziff sold his fast-growing computer magazine group for $1.4bn to private equity, raising even more from his tech exhibitions and ZDNet online businesses. He died in 2006, aged 76.
