Atlantic Medias Quartz sold to Japanese firm in $110m deal

Business and tech publisher Quartz has been sold to Japanese firm Uzabase by its parent company Atlantic Media, in a deal worth up to $110m (£83.75m). The deal, which is expected to close by the end of the month, will see Quartz retain its brand and existing editorial leadership team.

The sale is the latest step in Atlantic Medias attempt to divest its assets, spearheaded by chairman and owner David Bradley. Last year, the majority share in The Atlantic was sold to Laurene Powell Jobs Emerson Collective, and the firm was thought to be looking for a new owner for Quartz as far back as 2015.

Launched in 2012, Quartz boasts 20m monthly readers and has embraced modern communication channels including newsletters and chatbots. A rare success story in modern online publishing, the unit is thought to have posted a $1m profit in 2016 based on ad revenues of around $30m, and is expecting total sales this year to grow by 25 to 35 per cent. Quartz has 215 staffers operating around the world, including 100 journalists. 

Uzabase, the firm acquiring the Quartz business, went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange back in 2016, and currently boasts a market cap of around $870bn. It operates a wide range of services including a business intelligence platform, a B2B marketing platform and a consumer-facing news app called NewsPicks, which uses a paid subscription model, with 64,000 users paying approximately $15 per month. The new owners have been transparent when it comes to their intentions to develop a similar model for Quartz.

“Well quickly be developing paid products for the loyal audience Quartz has accrued over the past six years, building on and learning from the success that NewsPicks has had with community and paid content,” said Kevin J. Delaney and Jay Lauf, co-CEOs of Quartz. The specifics of those products have not yet been announced, but are expected to be “ironed out in coming months”.