Amazon to Buy Junglee, PlanetAll For About $280 Million in Stock
>>Funny thing is that Junglee (see bottom of Yahoo home page next to Visa advertisement) was leading buyers away from the Amazombie site because it does automatic price differential shopping including shipping. I just used it two days ago and it seriously undercut both AMZN and Barnes&Nobel. So, like the old days when GM saw some technology that would hurt them, they bought the company. Conspiracy theory? Dunno.
"An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup With its Web-shopping franchise under attack by conventional chain
stores, pioneer on-line retailer Amazon.com Inc. agreed to acquire two
closely held Internet commerce companies in a deal valued at roughly
$280 million.
Seattle-based Amazon, which in four years
has become a leader in on-line commerce by
selling books and music via the Internet,
announced Tuesday it would acquire
PlanetAll, a Web-based personal-organizer
service, and Junglee Corp., a Web-based
comparison service for shoppers and job
hunters.
Under the deal, Amazon will issue 800,000 of
its shares for Cambridge, Mass., based
PlanetAll, and 1.6 million for Sunnyvale,
Calif.-based Junglee. Amazon will also
assume all outstanding options for the two
companies.
CMG Information Services Inc. said its
received 225,000 restricted Amazon shares for its 25% stake in PlanetAll.
CMG had invested a total of $5 million in PlanetAll.
Amazon shares closed at $108.25 Monday in Nasdaq Stock Market
trading. The shares were up $3.125 to $111.375 in afternoon trading
Tuesday.
Though Amazon has yet to turn a profit, and isn't expected to until 2001,
its stock price has soared on strong revenue growth. Amazon had sales of
$147.8 million in 1997 -- a ninefold increase from the year before.
It is under new pressure, however, to solidify its presence in the face of
expansions by Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group Inc. from street
corners to cyberspace.
Junglee, founded three years ago, provides one-stop service to users of
some of the most popular Web sites, culling information from other sites
operated by more than 550 employers and 80 merchants. Its database of
job listings is used by the Web arms of publishers including Washington
Post Co., which was an early investor in Junglee, Times Mirror Co. and
Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal Interactive
Edition. The three founders chose as the company's name the Hindi word
for "of the jungle." They will remain with the company.
PlanetAll is an address book, calendar, and reminder service with 1.5
million members who use the service free of charge to organize and
automatically update information about friends, business associates,
relatives, and alumni.
Amazon said it will operate PlanetAll as a separate unit. PlanetAll's chief
executive, Jim Savage, and its two cofounders, Warren Adams and Brian
Robertson, will remain with the company.
Amazon expects to account for the PlanetAll transaction as a pooling of
interests. The Junglee transaction is likely to be logged under the purchase
method of accounting. Each transaction is expected to close within the
quarter, subject to customary closing conditions. |
