Private Equity: KKR Buys Overdrive in Latest Digital Media Push
Private equity investor KKR will purchase OverDrive Inc in a deal that will alter the future of digital reading.
The Rakuten subsidiary is a widely used digital reading platform in schools and libraries. The firms did not disclose the deal terms. However, this could be a significant win for Rakuten, which purchased OverDrive for $410 million in 2015.
Rakuten said in a news release that it will earn about $365.5 million in profit from the sale in Q1 2020.
“We decided on a transfer of the (OverDrive) shares in consideration of optimizing the allocation of Rakuten Group resources,” Rakuten said in the release. The release stated that OverDrive has 359 employees. In a section of the release headlined, “Financial position and performance in the past three fiscal years,” Rakuten said. “The company refrains from disclosing at the request of the transferee.”
KKR Buys Overdrive
KKR released its own statement about the deal. It said that Overdrive works with 43,000 libraries and schools in 75 nations. KKR’s Americas XII Fund will back the deal, the latest in a list of digital media investments. The company purchased RBMedia in 2018 and Nielsen.
“OverDrive provides digital tools and services to libraries and schools so that they can lend the widest variety of digital books, audiobooks, and other materials, while at the same time respecting and compensating authors and publishers through the widest range of access models,” KKR member Richard Sarnoff said.
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