M&A Report: Amazon, Roku and WeWork In the News

In keeping with our mission to provide comprehensive advertising analysis, MediaRadar puts together a report of the most important mergers and acquisitions news each week. Stay in the loop, whether you sell advertising space or focus on business development.

This week, Amazon invests in online health services, Roku gets its hands on good data, and WeWork is rescued by a Japanese conglomerate.

Health Navigator Acquired by Amazon

Amazon has completed its acquisition of Health Navigator, a startup that develops APIs for online health services.

Health Navigator is now the second startup Amazon has acquired and integrated into Amazon Care, a pilot healthcare service program for employees. The first was online pharmacy PillPack, which was acquired for just shy of $1 billion in 2018.

Health Navigator’s platform provides health services such as documenting health complaints and care recommendations. The company’s API has been used by digital health companies like TytoCare, Pager, Avizia, and MDLive. The integration of Health Navigator’s technology will aid Amazon Care in its quest to increase access to healthcare while reducing the cost of that care.

DataXu Being Acquired by Roku

Roku has announced that it will acquire Boston-based advertising technology company, DataXu. The deal is for a reported $150 million in cash and shares of Roku common stock.

Roku manufactures several digital media players that give consumers access to a variety of different streaming services. DataXu provides marketing cloud services that will help Roku better understand the customers they are targeting by analyzing and acting on massive amounts of data.

DataXu keeps tabs on 30.5 million active users across a variety of desktop, mobile, TV, and other media streamed directly over the internet.

SoftBank to Rescue WeWork

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire roughly 80 percent ownership stake in the troubled work space sharing giant.

Co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann will receive a nearly $1.7 billion severance pay from the deal to cut his ties to the company.

WeWork, which was in danger of running out of cash as soon as next month, has been slashing costs since its botched IPO in September. The company is expected to lay off thousands of employees in the coming weeks. WeWork had asked both SoftBank and JPMorgan Chase for new financing package proposals.

The $9.5 billion rescue package from SoftBank eventually won the bid, which values the coworking company at just $8 billion, a far cry from its $47 billion market value in January of this year.

In Other News

These are some other notable deals and developments from the past week:

• ​Ad Practitioners LLC has completed its acquisition of MONEY from Meredith Corporation. The sale is specifically for the personal finance website, Money.com, and signifies the last of the Time Inc. brands that Meredith has sought to offload since it acquired the company at the start of 2018.
• ​Vacasa has completed its acquisition of Wyndham Vacation Rentals from Wyndham Destinations, a timeshare company that operates a number of global hotel brands. Vacasa signed the purchase agreement with Wyndham Destinations on July 30 and closed the deal for $156 million in cash and $10 million in Vacasa equity.
• ​NASCAR has completed its $2 billion acquisition of International Speedway Corporation (ISC), a leading promoter of motorsports activities.
• ​Mastercard has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SessionM, a Customer Data technology company that tracks consumer loyalty and engagement with brands including airlines, restaurants, retailers, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies around the world.
• ​The private equity investment firm, Platinum Equity, is set to acquire software and public relations/marketing communications service provider Cision at a 34% premium in an all cash deal valued at approximately $2.74 billion.