Experian, the financial services arm of American business conglomerate GUS, has made its second acquisition in less than two months, snapping up marketing database company ClarityBlue for £85 million.
Today’s purchase of ClarityBlue, which Experian will slot into its existing marketing database, follows its acquisition in the middle of last month of PriceGrabber.com, an online comparison shopping service in the United States.
Experian paid $485 million plus expenses for PriceGrabber.com, a privately owned company based in California.
And it is Experian’s second acquisition since early December, after GUS completed its separation from Burberry, its upmarket fashion retailer.
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GUS said at the time that one of the reasons it was demerging Burberry was to concentrate on developing the highly profitable Experian business division.
Don Robert, the chief executive of Experian, said of today’s deal: “ClarityBlue is highly complementary to Experian’s marketing information and solutions businesses. Its addition to our existing offer will better enable us to help our clients around the world to respond more rapidly and send customers the right message, at the right time and over the right channel.”
ClarityBlue, whose customers include Barclaycard, Morgan Stanley, BSkyB and O2, designs, builds and manages marketing databases for large customers with customer numbers in the millions.
The idea is to provide a more targeted form of marketing, rather than blanket-bombing potential customers with numerous amounts of material.
ClarityBlue is expected to make pre-tax profits of about £5 million for the year to this July on sales up about a quarter at roughly £30 million.
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GUS said there was also an earn-out in the sale of up to £15 million over the next three years. It said it expected cost savings as a result of data processing and technology of “several million pounds”.
Seymour Pierce, the broker, said ClarityBlue should be earning neutral this year, but bring in about £3 million next year.
Shares in GUS rose 4.5p, or just under 0.5 per cent, to 1,023p early on.
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