Disney Aquires Online Assets of Canadian-based Kaboose
It wasn’t that long ago that Profit covered the re-launch of ParentZone.com, one of several family-focused properties owned by Toronto-founded Kaboose.
In an effort to beef-up their portfolio of online brands in the family genre, Disney has announced the acquisition of Kaboose’s North Americans assets for approx. $23 million CDN. The key assets included in the deal were Kaboose.com, Babyzone.com, AmazingMoms.com, Funschool.com and Zeeks.com.
In a separate same-day transaction, Kaboose also announced the sale of its business assets in the United Kingdom (Bounty Group Limited) to Barclays Private Equity for an additional $120 million CDN.
These two sale transactions essentially liquidates all of the Kaboose’s assets.
“2008 was a difficult year for many businesses and shareholders, and Kaboose was no exception. With the fundamental shift in the sentiment of the capital markets in general and in the media and advertising sectors in particular, and having been approached by several large international media companies and global private equity institutions interested in our business, we felt compelled to re-examine our long-term plan. With the advice of our financial advisors, the Company’s Board of Directors determined that Kaboose could divest its assets and realize significantly greater value than we could deliver as an independent public media company in the foreseeable future.”
The stock was trading in the 30-cent range recently, and these transactions will result in a per-share distribution of 65-cents. While it’s never easy to make decisions like this, it’s clearly a good exit for the founders and shareholders of the company. Kudos to Kaboose!
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