Canuck DOOH company goes on TSX; immediately acquires another OOH company
September 1, 2009 by Dave Haynes
A DOOH company that just got itself publicly-listed has already done its first deal, a share swap to acquire the assets of a company that has ad contracts in places with subway and rail systems in several cities around the globe.
Bassett Media Group Corp., a Toronto-based advertising display holding company, says it has signed a letter of intent to acquire some assets of Sidetrack Technologies Inc. in a share swap deal worth about $3 million, less assumed liabilities.
Bassett shares were halted on the TSX Venture Exchange pending news.
The company said Monday it will meet the pricetag of the acquisition by issuing shares at 22 cents per share.
Sidetrack owns and operates full-motion advertising display systems in subway and rail tunnels, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Monterrey and Rio de Janeiro.
“The proposed Sidetrack acquisition marks a significant step toward Bassett Media becoming a global media company,” said Matthew Bassett, the company’s president and CEO. “It will also provide the company with a platform to expand into other mass transit centres.”
The acquisition is expected to close before the end of September.
Bassett Media’s two primary business units are advertising display companies Impulse Media and Concourse Media.
Sidetrack are the guys who have those images installed along subway and rail tunnels at window level. When you are zipping by at high speed and look out the window the images have the net effect of looking like a full-motion video ad. It’s kinda cool but I always wondered what the labor costs were to change out the print material after every campaign, in the middle of the night, in a high-risk environment. The company is moving to digital panels and already has a couple of cities cut over.
DISCLOSURE – I’m not going to offer much comment on this because I have shares in Bassett, dating back to when I started Concourse Media what seems like a very long time ago. I’m not active in any way and have not been for years, and am so close to the company now I had no idea this was happening, and only found out about the TSX listing late yesterday. So call me an insider if you want ;-]
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