Two American entities - Liberty Interactive Corporation and zulily, inc. have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Liberty Interactive will acquire all outstanding shares of zulily for $18.75 per share. The acquisition will be attributed to Liberty Interactive's QVC Group tracking stock.
"We are excited for zulily to join the Liberty family," stated Greg Maffei, Liberty Interactive President and CEO in a statement. "zulily has built an impressive business around entertainment, discovery and value to the customer, which fits perfectly with the QVC philosophy. Combined under Liberty, we have an incredible opportunity to delight shoppers from the TV to the Internet."
"As the world leader in video and e-commerce retail, QVC is dedicated to reimagining shopping, entertainment and community as one," said Mike George, QVC president and CEO. "In zulily, we see a like-minded brand that shares our passion for discovering great products, for delivering honest value, and for building long term relationships with customers. Our teams are committed to learning from and inspiring each other and leveraging our platforms in new ways to accelerate growth, serve our customers better, and realize the full potential of both of these extraordinary brands."
"Mark Vadon (zulily chairman) and I are incredibly excited to announce our partnership with QVC. QVC has built an amazing business with a great culture and incredibly similar understanding for bringing entertainment, discovery and value into the daily customer experience." said Darrell Cavens, president and CEO of zulily. "This combination under Liberty is about investing in our future and providing a tremendous opportunity to accelerate our platform for growth of the zulily brand through the partnership with QVC."
The proposed transaction will bring two highly complementary businesses under common ownership and further strengthen QVC's leadership position in experiential, discovery driven shopping. While QVC and zulily will be operated as separate consumer facing brands, the collaboration creates numerous exciting opportunities, including leveraging QVC's global scale, curation, vendor relationships and video commerce expertise at zulily. Similarly, zulily's younger customer demographic, personalization expertise and e-commerce capabilities will boost QVC, the statement said.
Following the close of the transaction, zulily will remain based in Seattle. zulily will continue to be run by its talented management team, with Darrell Cavens remaining president and CEO of zulily. In connection with the transaction, Mike George is being appointed to the Executive Committee of the Liberty Interactive Board of Directors and will serve on that committee with John Malone and Greg Maffei. Darrell Cavens will report directly to Mike George and the other members of the Executive Committee. In addition, zulily co-founder Mark Vadon will join the Liberty Interactive Board of Directors.
The deal values zulily at $2.4 billion. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies and is anticipated to close during the fourth quarter of 2015.
