Harland Clarke, a payment and marketing services firm, will acquire online coupon site RetailMeNot in a deal worth $630 million in equity. Harland Clarke will pay $11.60 per share in cash, which is about 50 percent higher than the stock’s closing price of $7.75 on April 7.
A subsidiary of MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings, the investment firm owned by Ronald Perelman, Harland Clarke provides an array of services for financial institutions, including research, marketing and programs that manage paper checks (yes, people still use them).
In 2013, Harland Clarke acquired Valassis Communications, a direct mailer company, for $1.31 billion. It plans to use RetailMeNot to extend the reach of the coupons and promotions it manages.
In a statement, Harland Clarke chief executive Victor Nichols said “RetailMeNot provides a new global digital channel to distribute our clients’ offers that perfectly complements Valassis’ current digital, mobile, mail and other print networks.”
Harland Clarke’s purchase of RetailMeNot is the latest news in the ongoing consolidation of online deals companies. This is the second time RetailMeNot has been acquired — in 2010, it was purchased by WhaleShark Media (which rebranded its entire company to RetailMeNot after the deal) as part of an acquisition spree that included Deals.com, Deals2Buy, Coupon7 and Cheapstingybargains. Then in 2013, RetailMeNot went public on Nasdaq, raising $191 million in its initial public offering. It will go private after its acquisition by Harland Clarke, which is expected to close this quarter.
Other online coupon sites that have been acquired over the last three years include Ebates, which was bought by Rakuten for $1 billion in cash in 2014. More recently, Groupon acquired LivingSocial, though that deal was far less splashy — the acquisition price was so low that Groupon, which is downsizing its overall business, did not have to disclose it.
RetailMeNot was founded in 2009 and its investors included Austin Ventures, Google Ventures (now known as GV), Adams Street Partners, IVP, JP Morgan Investment and Norwest Venture Partners.
