WeWork Acquires Conductor: Newsletter March 9, 2018

ImageWeWork has this week announced their acquisition of Conductor. Specializing in the improvement of SEO for brands’ online presence, Conductor will leverage this acquisition to invest in their platform and move into the enterprise content marketing and distribution space. With plans to release its own marketing cloud, the digital marketing subsidiary will continue to operate as its own business but will partner with WeWork to bundle the two companies’ services for enterprise partners. Conductor raised over $60 million in funding from investors such as Matrix Partners, FirstMark, Investor Growth Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures and Catalyst Investors, however the financial terms of the acquisition were left undisclosed. According to Conductor CEO Besmertnik, existing customers should only expect the product to improve as they continue to invest in the platform’s development.

Elsewhere in the world of SaaS this week, Salesforce stock (CRM) reached a 52-week high on Wednesday, [WILL UPDATE THIS IF THURSDAY IS HIGHER] closing at $125.32 following 13.6% growth over the past month. Compared to 6% growth in the computer and technology sector since the beginning of the year, Salesforce outstripped its peers with a c.22% gain. Expected earnings per share of $2.56 on more than $15 billion in revenues for the next fiscal year likely contributed to the 50% rise of Salesforce stock year-over-year.

In digital marketing news this week, Quora has released a series of updates which allow its ad pixel to support multi-event conversion tracking. When using Quora’s pixel, advertisers can now build a strategy around more than one conversion event. For instance, e-commerce advertisers can now track and optimize against events like Add to Cart, Add Payment Info and Purchase. Advertisers will need to add relevant conversion event tags to their base pixel by managing metrics in the “Quora Pixel” tab of ads manager, and then adding the code on their website. For more on the updates, click here.

New in content business listings this week we have a $928K motivation and education advertising business, holding consistently high website traffic with 46 million visitors and 53 million page views in the last 12 months, over 1,000 unique posts helping the website rank for c.10,000 keywords, a large Facebook following with over 2.5 million highly-active followers, and a strong backlink profile with links from multiple notable sources. If you are interested in this business, follow the link to request a Prospectus.

[SUBJECT TO CHANGES] In events news this week, LTVConf is excited to share that several excellent speakers in the SaaS industry have been added to the lineup. Our clients have been granted an additional 50% discount on tickets to the premiere SaaS event through the next couple weeks. Use code FEINTERNATIONAL at checkout to apply your discount on tickets for this expert-packed conference by clicking here. This week, Founder Thomas Smale will be attending DCxSGN in Saigon, Vietnam, from March 10 – March 11, where he will give a speech on Increasing the Value of your Online Business. Reply to this email to set up a meeting if you are in the area!

Continue reading below for more on WeWork’s acquisition of Conductor, Salesforce’s 52-week stock market high and Quora’s digital marketing updates.

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Deal Highlights

New:

Advertising – Motivation & Education – $47K gross/mo

  • Large Facebook following with over 2.5 million highly-active followers
  • Continuously high website traffic with 46 million visitors and 53 million page views in the last 12 months
  • Strong backlink profile with links from multiple notable sources
  • Over 1,000 unique posts helping the website rank for c.10,000 keywords

Yearly net profit: $511,000
Asking price: $928,000

Sold:
Affiliate – Sports & Outdoors – $3.7Kgross/mo
Affiliate – Automotive – $2K gross/mo
Affiliate – Heating Appliances – $930 gross/mo

In the News…

WeWork Acquires Conductor 

WeWork has announced this week that they are acquiring SEO company Conductor.

The companies, though seemingly disparate, plan to work together to capitalize on human data to enter the marketing cloud and enterprise market. Conductor, a service which works with its clients to improve site rankings and searchability, has been a long-time contact of WeWork’s. Now that the two companies have merged, Conductor co-founder and CEO Seth Besmertnik has stated of the company’s future, “We’re going to be building a marketing cloud to go after the enterprise market,” arguing that “search data is human data.” Conductor plans to continue operations as a separate business, with discrete customers of their own, but will be searching for ways to integrate its offering with WeWork Enterprise customers. According to WeWork, their Enterprise members include 22 percent of the Fortune 500. Ahead of the acquisition, Conductor raised over $60 million in total funding, including investors Matrix Partners, Firstmark, Investor Growth Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures and Catalyst Investors.

Exact terms of the amount of the acquisition were kept confidential, though Besmertnik mentioned that the deal led to “a great outcome for everybody.”

Salesforce Stock Reaches 52-week High

Salesforce (CRM) stock hit a 52-week high on Wednesday, closing at $125.32—up over 50% from one year ago.

Over the past month, shares have risen 13.61% before hitting their 52-week high on Wednesday of this week. Since the beginning of the year, Salesforce has gained 21.76% compared to 6.01% increase for the Computer an Technology sector and the 8.88% year-to-date return for companies of a similar group. The current fiscal year is expected to show $2.03 earnings per share for Salesforce’s $12.65 billion in revenues. As reported last week, Salesforce reached $10 billion in revenue faster than any software company in history. Taking a look at the Zacks Rank stocks valuation scores, Salesforce’s value score is an F, but the growth and momentum scores are both As, giving the company an overall VGM score of B.

Given their current Zacks rank of “buy” given earnings estimates, the shares might still rise.

Quora Releases Advertising Updates

Google’s Hangouts Chat recently came out of beta testing this week, after having first been introduced at 2017’s Google Cloud Next.

Released as their own take on work communications systems like Slack, Hangouts Chat hopes to capture part of the intra-office communication market by positioning itself to a highly functionality-oriented audience. The platform is, understandably, heavily integrated with the G-suite of products, and boasts a focus on AI and machine learning. A good example of the focus on AI is the @Meet bot, which helps workers schedule meetings, along with the @Drive bot that sends notifications of files being shared in the Google suite. Currently, users can communicate in 28 supported languages and each room has a capacity for up to 8,000 members. Additionally, users can start video conferences through the Hangout Meet video capability. Built-in file uploads to Google Drive, Docs collaboration, and integrations with tools like Trello, RingCentral, Xero, UberConference, Kayak and a designated Giphy bot are all part of their value proposition.

Developers will also be able to build their own integrations and desired functionality, making it a tech-oriented tool in the already saturated communications market.