J.L. Halsey Corp. acquired Web analytics firm ClickTracks Analytics Inc. and Web content management company Hot Banana Software Inc.
The acquisitions, which may cost J.L. Halsey, Wilmington, DE, approximately $17.3 million in cash and stock with earn-out payments, are intended to target the mid-sized business market.
“We want to buy and build a platform where marketers could access all kinds of different marketing tools in one interface to make life easier for them,” said Loren McDonald, chief marketing officer of J.L. Halsey.
“There are a lot of companies focused providing these services in the high end, but not on the massive market in the middle,” he said.
The acquisition gives Halsey a total of 13,000 mid-sized business clients for e-mail services. This follows the recent acquisition of e-mail marketing firms Lyris Technologies and EmailLabs in May and October 2005, respectively.
Halsey paid the security holders of ClickTracks, Santa Cruz, CA, approximately $7.6 million in cash. It issued $2.9 million worth of Halsey common stock to accredited investors of ClickTracks.
The firm also agreed to pay the security holders of ClickTracks who are not accredited investors approximately $100,000 in cash. Halsey will pay the owners of ClickTracks another $3.3 million in earn-out payments if certain undisclosed milestones are reached over the next two years.
Meanwhile, Halsey paid the owners of Hot Banana,Toronto, approximately $1.7 million in cash. It will make installments totaling approximately $670,000 if Hot Banana achieves specified revenue and technology integration targets in the first and second year following the closing.
To finance these acquisitions, Halsey closed a $10 million subordinated bridge loan.
“Lyris and EmailLabs was the first phase of our larger project to build up this platform,” Mr. McDonald said. “ClickTracks and Hot Banana are the next phase and there will be more to come down the road.”
