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Informa, the UK events and academic publisher, has confirmed plans to acquire Ascential, which owns global conferences including advertising festival Cannes Lions, in a deal worth close to £1.2bn.
Alongside Informa’s first-half results on Wednesday, the boards of both companies said they had reached an agreement for a cash offer at 568p for each Ascential share. The value of FTSE 250 rival Ascential was about £750mn before the deal was first revealed by the Financial Times on Tuesday.
The acquisition of Ascential completes Informa’s three-year investment programme that has helped bolster its position as the world’s largest events business.
Informa said it expected “significant revenue opportunities”, an immediate boost to earnings per share and more than £12mn of annual cost savings and efficiency improvements.
Stephen Carter, chief executive of Informa, told the FT that Informa would be able to expand Ascential’s two main events, pointing to franchising of its own conferences around the world and growing use of data from customers. He added that both companies were performing strongly, with an increase in Informa’s guidance to the market for its financial results for the full year.
The events industry has bounced back strongly from the pandemic, exceeding pre-Covid levels as businesses flooded back to in-person conferences and awards shows.
Carter said Informa’s management made a decision at the end of 2021 to focus on business-to-business events, a move seen as “counterintuitive” in the wake of the global lockdowns from the pandemic. “In July 2024 [that] seems like a sensible thing to do when you’re posting double-digit growth numbers, but in November 2021 not everyone was telling me this was a genius idea,” he said.
Ascential said the proposal followed a number of approaches by Informa in recent months.
It has recently simplified its business to be mainly focused on events, with additional revenues from associated subscription and advisory services, making it an easier acquisition for Informa.
Ascential, which employs about 700 people, announced plans in March to return £850mn to shareholders after the £1.4bn sale of its digital commerce and trend forecasting divisions. It was trading near the offer price of 564p on Wednesday — and a market capitalisation of £1.2bn — a sharp increase from its value of £749mn before news broke of the deal talks on Tuesday.
Informa’s shares have risen about 14 per cent in the past year, giving the business a market capitalisation of £11.3bn. The company has grown every quarter since the low point reached during the pandemic, which shut down the global events industry.
Under Carter, former chief executive of communications regulator Ofcom, Informa has been active in expanding its business through acquisitions, including events group Tarsus from Charterhouse Capital Partners for $940mn in March last year.
The same month, Hyve was acquired by private equity group Providence Equity Partners for $580mn, and rival Cvent by Blackstone for $4.6bn, showing the extent of investor interest in the growing events industry.
Ascential is one of the few remaining events companies of any scale. Analysts at Peel Hunt said Ascential’s events were “prestigious ones, with longevity of growth, which should merit a premium valuation”.
Analysts at MKP Advisors said there was unlikely to be any counter offers: “Informa management has a good track record in dealmaking and is likely to get the benefit of the doubt to deliver on any M&A deal.”
