19th Jun, 2008

Toluna finally in the US - for about 2 cents

Toluna have just bought CommonKnowledge, a US panel provider. I don’t know a lot about CommonKnowledge - they seem the usual multi purpose panel provider with consumer, healthcare, B2B panels etc. Your2Cents is their main consumer panel.

Frankly, it looks like rather a good deal to me - CommonKnowledge profits were $1.9m in 2007 according to MRWeb. Toluna have paid between $8.5m and $10.5m (it depends on post deal performance). This is a multiple of 4.5 to 5.5 times profits…not such a bad payback really..and Toluna badly needed a US option as it was a huge gap in their portfolio.

Toluna’s profits in 2007 were $6.4m. However their market cap is about $150m currently (23 times profits), so CommonKnowledge looks like cheap profit to me.

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I see Livra have been bought by Ipsos too. Nice buy as they seem to have a good hold on that market place and to have broken through in awareness terms (though no idea on the price).

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