The transformer
01 Apr 2006
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It’s been all change at B2B information company United Business Media (UBM) since the arrival of David Levin as chief executive in April 2005. Lucy Fairclough goes behind the scenes.
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In the 12 months since David Levin’s arrival at UBM it has transformed from a ‘media holding company’ into a more focused business media and information company. When Levin started at UBM, the company had assets worth approximately £1.6bn. Over the year, Levin has overseen the sale of assets worth nearly £700m, including Channel Five. At the same time however, UBM has acquired more than £200m worth of assets, expanding its operations in China, India and Japan.
At the time of his appointment he said of his role: “My objectives are to continue to build and deliver strong shareholder value, ensure that I build on our reputation for delivering superior services and products to our many customers and maintaining our corporate values to all our employees.”
Levin has said he sees the B2B market as having three main classes of assets: magazines, websites and events. He notes that the companies that have stuck with magazines, without diversifying their portfolios, have found that their market positions and asset values have declined, in some cases by large amounts.
He talked to paidContent.org about the logic in making the three ‘Ps’ - print, portals and people (events) – work together. Said Levin: “As such, the acquisitions we have made have been focused across those three media types. It's inherent that if a company is trying to bring buyers and sellers together, it needs to cater to this business structure.”
He says of the role of the business: "UBM connects buyers and sellers who need to trade with each other through events, print and online.” Recent acquisitions, such as the purchase of IT security event and training organiser, Black Hat, for $10m, and the Japan Jewellery Fair, for $2.7m, illustrate how UBM aims to build leading positions in its key sectors, adding events to a brand portfolio to enrich the product offering, extend geographically and increase audience.
Levin describes the changes at UBM as a decision to focus on two core markets: the news distribution business through PR Newswire division, which has received significant investment over the past year; and the events, online and publishing businesses, mainly under the CMP umbrella.
The company currently has a presence in more than 60 vertical markets, and those sectors consolidate into about a dozen major industry segments. Levin says: “We're focused on ensuring optimal market share in each of those business segments by building our market share organically and through acquisitions, while increasing our capabilities to access and support our customers in each one of those vertical markets.”
He says of the CMP companies that the focus is fairly straightforward: “CMP provides information and introductions to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. Whenever CMP has a presence in a specific vertical market, it is our job to make sure that it provides a better introduction service and a better informational service than our competitors, especially if CMP is deeply embedded in that space.”
Commenting on how business and professional media companies should work with the likes of search engines, Levin said: “I think the relationship between B2B media companies and the search engines is a very important one, but I don't think there are simple answers as to exactly how these relationships should work. Overall, the boundaries are shifting. In many cases, B2B media companies and the search engines are partners. Also, search engines are an important source of traffic to our sites.”
Levin’s strategy is paying off. In its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2005, UBM showed revenue growth of 21.3 per cent to £675.8m. He said: “We intend to accelerate the rate of acquisitions from the £105m achieved in 2005 towards the £150m to £250m level annually whilst maintaining our strict financial criteria for acquisitions.”
Details from tina.hart@ppa.co.uk at PPA on 020 7400 7524.