Meltwater acquires Linkfluence
Meltwater, a leading global provider of media intelligence and social analytics, has entered into an agreement under which it is committed to acquire Linkfluence, a French SaaS company using artificial intelligence to algorithmically mine social media for consumer insights. The deal will be worth €50 million ($59.5 million U.S.) in a combination of cash, equity, and earn-out.
The Linkfluence acquisition would be Meltwater’s ninth since 2016, and the first since the company was listed on Euronext Growth Oslo in December 2020. The acquisition is part of Meltwater’s growth strategy, which involves investments and acquisitions in the social media segment.
For the full year 2020, Linkfluence reached a revenue of €17 million. Excluding earn-out, Meltwater has agreed to purchase Linkfluence for a price of 2 times 2020 revenue, to be settled 50% in cash and 50% in new shares to be issued by Meltwater at a volume-weighted average price to be determined prior to closing.
The acquisition has been board approved by both companies and remains subject to completion of the information consultation process of the Linkfluence employees’ committee, as well as other customary conditions to closing. The transaction is expected to close by May 2021.
By combining Linkfluence’s award-winning SaaS solutions and expertise within market research and Meltwater’s global reach with 50 sales offices on 6 continents, we will be well positioned to be the driving force of automating the multi-billion dollar market research industry, said Meltwater in a news release announcing the transaction.
Founded in 2006 in Paris, Linkfluence currently employs 150 employees across seven offices. The company’s software is used by brands to identify buyer communities online and understand how to activate them, see how a brand is associated with certain topics or values to measure brand perception as well as detect and monitor trends or analyze customer experience.
For each of these use cases, Linkfluence’s technology analyzes billions of public content pieces on the social web using natural language processing or computer vision and structures this data into actionable insights, available to its clients in real-time and on demand.
