B. Riley Financial Inc., a Los Angeles-based investment firm that maintains an office in Newport Beach, is buying internet service provider United Online Inc. for $11 a share or about $170 million.
The bid is lower than the $12.50 per share B. Riley offered in November. Woodland Hills-based United Online rejected that bid and began looking at its “strategic options,” including a sale.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the third quarter and comes as United Online has struggled and begun shedding non-core operations. In the last nine months it has sold three businesses to three buyers for more than $43 million
United Online interim Chief Executive Jeff Goldstein said in a statement, “The transaction will allow our remaining operating business, the communications segment, to continue under B. Riley” and buyout United Online investors.
Both companies closed essentially flat today—B. Riley at about a $169 million market cap and United Online at about $161 million.
Madler is a reporter for a sister publication, the Los Angeles Business Journal.
