Koch Equity Development is expected to make a $500 million, non-controlling investment in Getty Images. Getty says the equity investment is expected to close by the end of this year.
The Getty family is acquiring all of the Carlyle Groups 51% equity stake in Getty Images for about $250 million and rolling over about $2.35 billion of outstanding debt. The deal gives Getty Images an enterprise value of under $3 billion compared to $3.3 billion in 2012 when Carlyle acquired a majority stake in Getty. At that time Carlyle invested about $500 million in the company. It is believed that the Getty family has ended up owning a significant portion of the debt.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that on January 4, 2018, the Company invested $15.0 million in convertible preferred shares issued by Zcool Network Technology Limited ("Zcoolto”). Zcool's primary business is the operation of an e-commerce platform in China whereby customers can pay to license content contributed by creative professionals. The platform has nearly six million registered users. Zcool has been the exclusive distributor of Shutterstock creative content in China since 2014.
I was asked recently if I am optimistic that Shutterstock will maintain its momentum in 2017? The short answer is YES, I believe Shuttrstock’s 2017 growth will continue on the same track as it has in the last two years. In 2014 revenue growth was
39%. In 2015 it was
30% and in 2016 it is expected to be around
18%. I expect the company will continue to maintain its
DOWNWARD trend.
An investment portfolio manager recently asked me to spend five minutes giving my “high-level thoughts on the (stock photo)
industry outlook, competitive dynamics and emerging trends.” I couldn’t do it in anywhere near five minutes. Here are my high-level thoughts.
Overall sales for Pearson fell 7% in the first 9 months of 2016, due to further inventory corrections by retailers in North American Higher Education courseware in July and August. Pearson noted that trends improved in September and, so far, into October.
Charles Taylor is still trying to put together a company that will consolidate many smaller independent picture agencies into a single publicly traded company that will be traded on the AIM stock exchange in the UK. Back in 2014 Taylor’s organization was called
GDI Media Limited. The new version is called Avalon. More about it can be found
here.
Toronto-based
500px has raised $13 million in a Series B round of funding. This round was led by
Visual China Group led this round with an $8 million investment. The other $5 million came from existing Series A backers that include Andreessen Horowitz, Harrison Metal, and ff Venture Capital.