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Leading online mall operator Rakuten has announced the acquisition of Buy.com Inc in a deal worth $250 million. The announcement is part of the company's initiative to establish itself internationally and represents its first foray into the U.S. market. Buy.com had revenues of $62.5 million in 2009 and a client base of 14 million for its e-commerce operations.
Rakuten had recently announced a partnership with Baidu to launch a virtual shopping market in China and is also actively scouting for opportunities in Europe and other markets. Rakuten posted net income of 56.6 billion yen ($617.6 million) on revenues of 298 billion yen ($3.2 billion) in 2009.
© Japan Corporate News Network
7 Comments
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TumbleDry
is it technology or business?
motogaijin
it's a business.
gogogo
Interesting
bobcatfish
On my quick, rough and presumptous calculation they paid 25X the yearly profit. who said the tech bubble was over?
Thmegu
Don't know what their profit was but over 4 times revenue is healthy indeed. I want someone like that to buy company.
motogaijin
I'm guessing that the simple 'buy.com' URL was one of the things that Rakuten was most interested in--this is a web address that is easy to remember, easy to type, and which can be understood easily even by people who don't speak much English, so is suitable for use outside of the Anglophone world.
steam
the name buy.com must hold some serious equity for these guys..
amazon might face some competition if rakuten can work some magic into this