Meltwater has entered into an agreement to acquire Owler, a crowd-sourcing company. Owler is a Silicon Valley innovator in the Ksh. 3.23 trillion ($30 billion) market for business information. Meltwater has agreed to purchase Owler for Ksh. 2.04 billion ($18.9 million) in cash and Ksh. 603 million ($5.6 million) in Meltwater equity. Upon integration, Owler is not expected to have a material impact on Meltwater’s 2021 revenue forecast.
Since its inception in 2011, Owler has grown into a large online business community, next to LinkedIn. The Owler community consists of 5 million active business professionals who contribute up-to-date business information to Owler’s 14 million company profiles. Owler members include 96% of the Fortune 500, and 73% of high growth companies in the USA. Each month, members contribute hundreds of thousands of insights not known to the public with varying topics.
Commenting on the partnership, John Box, CEO of Meltwater said, “Owler crowdsources information that would otherwise be impossible to find. Combining this proprietary information from Owler with the insights that Meltwater is able to extract from online news and social media will differentiate Meltwater’s product in the market and bring great value to our 27,000 customers globally. It not only strengthens our offering in use cases we serve today, such as brand management and competitive intelligence, but opens up new and exciting opportunities in areas such as sales intelligence and risk management, where Owler is already present.”
The Owler acquisition will be Meltwater’s third acquisition since the company was listed on Euronext Growth Oslo in December 2020. The acquisition is part of Meltwater’s growth strategy, which involves investments and acquisitions in the social media segment.