Executives at other digital media companies were closely watching BuzzFeed’s move onto the public market and will surely keep track of how it fares now that it has to reveal its financial results to the world every quarter.
Vice Media, the youth culture and news publisher, was in talks this year with an acquisition company, 7GC, to merge and go public, The New York Times reported. Vice had been on the hook for payments to the private equity giant TPG, one of its investors. But Vice put its plans to go public on hold, announcing in September that it had raised $135 million in investor funding, which would be used for “its growth initiatives” and for mergers and acquisitions.
A person familiar with the plans said Vice had decided against a deal with an acquisition company because many investors were much more skeptical about such transactions after regulators and financial experts raised questions about the credibility of companies that had gone public with a SPAC’s help.
Vox Media, which bought New York magazine and its websites in 2019, is still considering a possible SPAC merger, The Information reported last month. The company recently bought Punch, a cocktail website.
Bustle Digital Group plans to go public next year, Bryan Goldberg, its chief executive, said in an interview on Monday. The company, which publishes the women’s website Bustle, has been acquiring other outlets in recent years, including Gawker and Mic.
“Just the fact that BuzzFeed is out in the public markets is a milestone for the industry,” Mr. Goldberg said, speaking before share price dropped. “But the first hour of trading wasn’t just a positive surprise, it was a spit-out-your-coffee type of surprise.”
“BuzzFeed and all the other digital media companies have spent the last three years really improving our businesses and really figuring out how to create value for clients and for users,” Mr. Goldberg added. “And I think a lot of us feel that with renewed optimism and hopefully greater access to capital we can continue to grow without so much uphill opposition.”