Meredith Announces Acquisition of Allrecipes.com for $175M

Meredith Corporation

and The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. announced today that Meredith, has agreed to purchase Allrecipes.com, the world's No. 1 digital food site. The acquisition of a digital brand of scale aligns well with Meredith's Total Shareholder Return (TSR) financial strategy, which was announced on October 25, 2011. The TSR strategy includes (1) An increase in its annual stock dividend by 50 percent to $1.53 per share; (2) A new $100 million share repurchase authorization; and (3) Strategic investments to drive incremental revenue and profit growth. The transaction, valued at $175 million, is expected to close later this quarter. Meredith plans to invest in Allrecipes.com to optimize the site for today's growing online and mobile audiences. This investment spending, along with normal business seasonality, is expected to make the acquisition slightly dilutive – approximately $0.10 per share, or less than 4 percent – to Meredith's fiscal 2012 full year financial performance. Meredith expects the acquisition will be modestly accretive to earnings per share and free cash flow in fiscal 2013.