Meredith Sells Money.com to Puerto Rican Advertising Company
Money magazine ceased its print edition this summer
Meredith Corporation has unloaded the last Time Inc. title it wanted to shed, selling Money magazine’s website Money.com to the Puerto Rico-based advertising company Ad Practitioners LLC.
Financial details of the deal were not made available, and a Meredith spokesperson declined to say how much it was worth. The sale marks the last of the Time Inc. brands that Meredith was publicly shopping around after buying the parent company.
Meredith inherited Money magazine when it acquired Time Inc. at the beginning of 2018. Not long after, Meredith execs said they would sell off a number of titles to prioritize its portfolio of lifestyle brands: Time, Sports Illustrated, Money and Fortune.
The first of those titles to be unloaded was Time, which sold to Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, for $190 million in cash in November 2018. A month later, Meredith sold Fortune to Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon for $150 million in cash.
In May, Meredith sold Sports Illustrated to Authentic Brands Group for $110 million. Under Maven’s operating control, the magazine has undergone layoffs and is in the midst of a restructuring. Meredith said it would use the money from those sales to pay down debts accrued in its $2.8 billion Time Inc. acquisition.
In April, Meredith execs seemed to change strategies, saying Money magazine was no longer for sale and that it would go digital-only. Its last issue was the June/July edition. It’s not clear whether a print magazine will be revitalized under Ad Practitioners’ ownership.
Ad Practitioners also operates ConsumersAdvocate.org, a website that provides advice on negotiating mortgage rates.
With the sale of Money.com, 14 employees will remain with Meredith “until Jan. 31, 2020, at the latest,” the companies said.
“We are pleased to find a great home for the Money brand and wish all parties great success under the new ownership,” said Meredith chief development officer John Zieser, in a statement. “We continue to make significant progress on our asset sales and expect to shortly announce additional transactions at attractive multiples.”
