How Much for Your Job Board?

So Trinity Mirror have purchased TheCareerEngineer - Interesting acquisition i think but for a different reason. (just to be clear - i dont know anyone at the site so my assumptions about costs and revenue are informed estimates)

Assumptions

• Trinity have stated projected revenues for next year at £500K - so we can be pretty accurate about the multiple they have used on revenue and even profit, if we assume its costs are much the same as any similarly sized job board - a few staff - marketing - technical - office and errr....not much else.
• 2007 Revenue £400K (will they have frontloaded deals to fatten its revenues up for sale???)
• 2007 Costs £150K
• Profit - you work it out

So the interesting thing about is

• its a small acquisition at £1.9m of a boutique site

This is the sort of deal that has got all the small to medium size job board owners getting  their calculators out, multiplying their projected revenues by 4 and praying that DMGT or Trinity call in next 2-3 years.

Now i guess that Trinity thought they needed a strategic acquisition in Engineering to go with their  vertical products like Gaapweb, TotallyLegal, SecsinCity etc - and that DMGT have got one (Justengineers) so they should have one too.

And its a very decent site - so i am not criticising - it may though represent the next wave of acquisitions will now be mostly at this level.