The Market Herald’s series of redundancies following acquisition of Gumtree, Carsguide and Autotrader
ASX listed The Market Herald (TMH) has made a series of redundancies as part of a “transformation”, following the completion of its deal to acquire Gumtree, Carsguide and Autotrader last week as part of its major expansion into digital classifieds advertising, Mumbrella can reveal.
Managing director of TMH, Jag Sanger told Mumbrella the company “is excited to build the largest digital community of buyers and sellers in Australia” after purchasing 100% of the three companies for $86.7million.
Jag Sanger
Sanger told Mumbrella the majority of personnel changes are due to the separation of Gumtree from the global business and that it is “less about cost-cutting”.
While the number is not confirmed, its understood the redundancies total around 50. Sanger rejected this figure.
“We are making changes to our team of over 300 now and are sad to see great people leave, but we have given industry-leading separation packages and every assistance to all our leavers in getting new jobs – quickly.”
Sanger said across its entire classifieds business, “together we will reach over 12 million economically active adults every month in Australia, buying and selling over $2bn of products and services – each month”, with the launch of TMH One to come as well.
He added TMH ONE will be an integrated online, video, classifieds and print network, “with over five billion ad impressions and 12 million video streams a month”, but that in order to execute this transition “we need different skills and different people”.
In this, it includes separating the local Australian business from the international owners it has had previously, in the case of Gumtree.
In addition, Sanger said there are a number of editorial changes in work at Carsguide, though no redundancies were made. Sanger added all changes in the Carsguide editorial team were resignations.
Sanger said the number of redundancies was limited to the Gumtree business.
The Market Herald is currently trading at $0.40, with a market capitalisation of $109.56 million.
Competitor Carsales’ media arm, Mediahouse signalled its new strategic direction at its Open House Upfront this week, as it looked to harness the potential of the ‘platform economy’ for its marketing partners and leverage its almost 11 million members.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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How does that work? How do you pay $86m for a business and only be worth $110m? I don’t get it. Something doesn’t seem right there. How do you fund such a transaction without running into serious strife?
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Unfortunately for them most of the people that built the Carsguide business had already been squeezed out by the over inflated egos at Gumtree.
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