- GeneralSPAC
- January 10, 2021
- 6 minutes read
BuzzFeed Holds SPAC Merger Talks: Report
The digital media company BuzzFeed has held merger talks with Supernova Partners Acquisition Co. (NYSE: SPNV), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)…
The digital media company BuzzFeed has held merger talks with Supernova Partners Acquisition Co. (NYSE: SPNV), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) headed by Spencer Rascoff, according to a report from The Information. Rascoff is a co-founder and former CEO of the popular real estate listings site Zillow
The report corroborates a previous report from the Wall Street Journal that BuzzFeed was among a host of digital media companies exploring deals to go public through SPACs.
It now seems that digital media companies are looking to get into the SPAC frenzy that’s been widely dominated by technology companies.
In December, Group Nine Media, a company that owns popular brands like NowThis and Thrillist, formed its own SPAC to raise up to $230 million from investors. Recently, another popular digital media company, Bustle Digital Group, was reported to be seeking a SPAC merger.
BuzzFeed, the company, consists of the popular BuzzFeed.com property, BuzzFeed News, the food channel Tasty, and HuffPost which it recently acquired. The company has been through ups and downs, once flying high but getting its wings trimmed by a slump in advertising revenue that has continued to plague media companies.
Facing falling advertising revenues, BuzzFeed positioned itself to adjust, starting new lines of businesses outside advertising and working to cut costs. The company was on track for profitability in 2020, according to its CEO Jonah Peretti.
For a media company, BuzzFeed is an outlier in the amount of venture funding that it’s raised; $500 million. Surely, the company’s investors are looking towards an exit and a merger with a SPAC seems to be an ideal way that’ll see BuzzFeed raise more money and also become publicly-traded.
Supernova Partners Acquisition Co., the SPAC BuzzFeed is reported to have held discussions with, raised $402.5 million from its public listing in October 2020.
Photo: BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti by Hubert Burda Media is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
