Forbes looking to sell for over $400 mn, says it has 'serious' offers

New York: The Forbes family has hired Deutsche Bank to explore the sale of its namesake business magazine and other media properties, Forbes Media Chief Executive Mike Perlis told employees in an email on Friday.

Perlis said the move is prompted by “more than a few over the transom indications of interest” to buy the company which has about 370 employees.

“The frequency and serious nature of these overtures have brought us to a decision point,” Perlis said in the memo. “We have hired Deutsche Bank to represent us, and we expect interest from numerous suitors.”

The Wall Street Journal cited a person familiar with the matter as saying that the owners were hoping Forbes Media would fetch between $400 million and $500 million.

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According to the Alliance for Audited Media, the company’s flagship property,Forbes, has a circulation of 933,000, and is the third largest US business magazine, after Time Warner’s_Money_magazine andBloomberg Businessweek.

The Forbes family still controls the company after selling a 45 percent stake to investment firm Elevation Partners in 2006, prior to the financial crisis which decimated the print-ad revenue that magazines including Forbes have traditionally relied on.

[caption id=“attachment_1233185” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Steve Forbes, the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine in this file photo. AFP[/caption]

The Journal said the timing of the sale was “critical” as Forbes Media is due to repay a $264 million investment by private-equity firm Elevation Partners LP within the next several years.

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It’s no secret that the print industry is hemorrhaging money and facing huge challenges as advertising revenue and readership shrinks in the digital era. Forbes‘ad revenue for the first 9 months of the year fell 7.5 percent to $165.7 million, according to the Association of Magazine Media, and the ad pages in the print edition have fallen 12.5 percent.

The magazine, controlled by former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, has changed tack in recent years to focus heavily on the digital side of its editorial operations to make up for the inertia in print ad sales.

“Digital revenues are expected to increase over 25 percent by the end of the year,” Perlis wrote.

“Our efforts have also focused on diversifying our revenue streams to complement our advertising-based businesses - and many of our initiatives have come to fruition this year.”

To grow digital ad sales, Forbes acquired True/Slant, a publishing software platform that reconstructed how Forbes.com operates by expanding its online presence with hundreds of freelance bloggers.

_Forbes.com’_s traffic grew from about 12 million unique monthly visitors in 2010 to about 26 million, said the company citing comScore data.

Following its online expansion, digital advertising surpassed print ads sales for the first time this year and now Forbes makes about 55 percent of total advertising revenue from digital advertising.

Forbes Media also owns several websites beyond Forbes.com, including Investopedia.com and RealClearPolitics.

Forbes has in recent years attempted to grow other sources of revenue, by expanding the company’s conference business and begun licensing the brand name to office buildings. The publishing software is also licensed to publishers that want to replicate the contributor-submission model of content creation.

If Forbes is sold, it would join a trend of print properties being sold. In a surprise deal announced in August this year, Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive ofAmazon.com, who is worth $25 billion, bought theWashington PostCo.‘sflagship newspaper and some related publishing assets for $250 million.

The high-profile sale followed Red Sox owner John Henry’s purchase of The Boston Globe for $70 million from The New York Times Company, a fraction of the $1.1 billion purchase price the Times Company paid in 1993.

Newsweek,the news magazine whoseprint version was abandonedlate last year, was sold in August byIACto another all-digital news company, IBT Media.

Forbeswas started by financial columnist BC Forbes in 1917. His son, Malcolm, succeeded him as publisher. He handed the iconic business magazine down to his son, Steve, who is still chairman and editor in chief.