UK premium dating brand Lovestruck has been acquired by Hong Kong-based DateTix.
Lovestruck has been bought for 2m shares and an earn-out of over £154,000 ($270,000 AUD), as well as a cash consideration equivalent to Lovestruck’s existing net cash balance at settlement date.
With current share prices at 0.42 AUD, this means the 2m DateTix shares are worth just under £480,000.
And DateTix says the acquisition will boost its active user base by over 259%.
Lovestruck has been one of the leading lights in the UK dating world since being founded in 2006 by Laurence Holloway and Brett Harding originally as London Lunch Date, before the site was rebranded to Lovestruck in 2007.
In 2013, the company was named the fifth fastest-growing UK tech company by Deloitte, winning numerous other awards and expanding its services to Hong Kong and Singapore.
In 2015, the company posted revenues of just over £1.3m, registering 35,500 MAUs and 4,500 paying subscribers at the end of May 2016.
Over 96% of the company’s revenue comes from recurring membership subscriptions.
“We are excited about leveraging their localised expertise for our Hong Kong and Singapore operations and, in return, look forward to imparting our knowledge and expertise gained over 10 years in the industry in order to accelerate growth of the exciting DateTix platform and their future expansion plans as part of a holistic portfolio strategy.”
For DateTix, the acquisition is designed to significantly increase its scale in terms of revenue and monetisation, as well as help the brand move into the UK market, and expand Lovestruck into markets like China.
DateTix is a Hong Kong-based social platform designed to help users to meet new people offline, whether it be for dating, relationships or platonic purposes.
The brand was founded by dating entrepreneur Michael Ye, and last October was acquired by cloud software platform Enverro Limited for 12.5m shares, and a total of 12m performance shares.
Speaking about the acquisition, Ye said: “We are incredibly excited to have the opportunity to acquire Lovestruck, a leading online dating platform in DateTix’s existing markets of Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as in the United Kingdom, one of the world’s largest markets for online dating and one of DateTix’s future target markets.
“This acquisition comes during a period of very strong organic growth for DateTix, with Monthly Active Members up 64% month-on-month in May, and adding the highly scalable Lovestruck platform to our product portfolio will further accelerate our growth momentum and increase the scale of our user base and the reach of our platform.”
The transaction was unanimously approved by Lovestruck and DateTix’s board of directors.
The deal is expected to close in July and post-acquisition, Lovestruck will keep its own brand, and co-founder and CEO Brett Harding will remain as CEO to drive its future growth and expansion.
Will will update this story with more information as it is released.