Lyft Inc $530 million
Ebates Inc $981 million : October 2014
Viber Media $905 (or $900?) million : March 2014 : mobile chat and app platform provider
Wuaki.tv
Viki Inc
Kobo Inc. $350 (or $315?) million : ? 2012 : e-reader and e-book provider
Play.com $39 million : 2011 : U.K. e-commerce operator
Ikeda 75% stake : June 2011: e-commerce technology and services
Tradoria 80% stake : 2011: e-commerce platform
PriceMinister $248 million : 2010 : France-based e-commerce operator
Buy.com $250 million: 2010 : e-retailerTradoria 80% stake : 2011: e-commerce platform
PriceMinister $248 million : 2010 : France-based e-commerce operator
Total $3.2 billion
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From internetretailer.com 's article
Rakuten pays $410 million for U.S. e-book marketplace OverDrive
March 19, 2015 by BLOOMBERG NEWS
OverDrive will strengthen Rakuten’s e-book business by adding a distribution platform, more than 2.5 million titles, relationships with 5,000 publishers and 30,000 libraries.
(Bloomberg) -- Rakuten Inc., operator of Japan’s biggest Internet shopping mall, will pay $410 million in cash for e-book distributor OverDrive Inc. to expand its digital content business.
OverDrive will strengthen Rakuten’s e-book business by adding a distribution platform, more than 2.5 million titles, relationships with 5,000 publishers and 30,000 libraries.
Rakuten has spent about $3.2 billion over the past three years to buy companies as it expands into online services and selling e-books, video and other content. The company said earlier this month it would invest $530 million into Lyft Inc. and paid $981 million in cash for Ebates Inc. in October, after acquiring Viber Media Ltd. last March for $905 million.
Rakuten’s billionaire chairman Hiroshi Mikitani has introduced tablets in Japan to help sell e-books, tracking rival Amazon.com Inc.’s strategy of delivering digital content through its Kindle platform. Mikitani is Japan’s third-richest man with a net worth of about $9.8 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
OverDrive supplies the industry’s largest catalog of e- books, audiobooks, music and streaming video to 33,000 libraries, schools and retailers worldwide. It will operate as a subsidiary of Rakuten’s U.S. unit.
As of Dec. 31, Rakuten had about $9.9 billion in net cash, according to Bloomberg.
Rakuten.com Shopping is No. 46 in the Internet Retailer 2014 Top 500 Guide, while Rakuten Inc. is No. 20 (2?) in the Internet Retailer 2015 Asia 500. Amazon.com is No. 1 in the Top 500.
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Japan’s Rakuten buys U.S. rebate site Ebates for $1 billion
September 9, 2014 by BLOOMBERG NEWS
It represents another step toward expansion into the U.S. for the company that previously bought Buy.com and other e-retail assets.
Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Rakuten Inc. agreed to buy U.S. rebates web site Ebates Inc. in Japan’s largest e-commerce deal as the operator of the country’s biggest online mall seeks expansion outside its home market through acquisitions.
Rakuten will pay $1 billion in cash for all of Ebates, it said in a filing to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday. San Francisco-based Ebates offers cash rebates to customers who buy products ranging from laptops to lipsticks from the web site’s retail partners.
Rakuten is betting the purchase will help push its global e-commerce strategy. Rakuten has also been plowing cash into technologies such as mobile applications and online video as it seeks to add to its online marketplace business.
“This deal doesn’t just mean we’ve started a cash-back web site in the U.S., I think we can operate this model all over the world,” Mikitani told reporters at a briefing in Tokyo yesterday. The purchase will lift the proportion of Rakuten’s e- commerce transactions from outside Japan to 16% from about 6% currently, he said.
Rakuten targets to raise the proportion to 50% of total around 2020, said Mikitani, Japan’s fourth-richest man with a net worth of about $7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Points Program
Rakuten fell 1.3% to 1,254 yen in Tokyo yesterday, the lowest level since May 23. The stock has lost 20% this year, compared with the 0.2% decline in the benchmark Topix index. The shares dropped the most in three months on Sept. 8 on concerns about the deal’s cost effectiveness, after Rakuten confirmed it was in negotiations.
The company wants to create with Ebates a membership-based marketplace with “the world’s largest product line-up” ranging from niche to luxury items, and featuring a points program, Rakuten said in the exchange statement. The potential impact on its earnings from the acquisition is “difficult to estimate” at present, it said.
Ebates, which has 2.5 million active members and more than 2,600 retailers in its network, posted an operating income of $13.7 million on net revenue of $167.4 million in fiscal 2013, Rakuten said. Members spent $2.2 billion shopping through Ebates last year.
“Joining forces with Rakuten will help accelerate our U.S. and international growth,” Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer of Ebates, said in a Rakuten statement distributed by Businesswire.
Viber Purchase
The deal comes after Rakuten announced 18 acquisitions since the start of last year, and the cybermall operator said in June it’s open to more large-scale buys following its bond debut. Rakuten bought messaging service Viber Media Inc. for $905 million in March, Japan’s biggest e-commerce deal at the time according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The company, which Mikitani founded in 1997, was an acquirer in three of the top ten e-commerce deals in Japan before the Ebates purchase was announced, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As of June 30, Rakuten had about 1.7 trillion yen ($16 billion) in cash and short-term investments, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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Rakuten buys mobile messaging company Viber for $900 million
February 14, 2014 by AMY DUSTO Associate Editor
Viber allows members to chat and talk for free on mobile, as well as purchase and send each other digital stickers. Rakuten’s CEO says it has “tremendous potential” to become a gaming platform, too.
Rakuten Inc. has purchased mobile chat and app platform provider Viber Media Inc. for $900 million, the retailer announced today. Viber provides free chat and voice-over- Internet (VoIP) services to consumers. It also allows users to purchase and send digital versions of cartoon-like stickers, similar to emoticons in chat messages, to one another. Additionally, Viber has “tremendous potential” as a mobile gaming platform.
Viber understands how people actually want to engage, this makes Viber the ideal total consumer engagement platform for Rakuten to bring deep understanding to vast new audiences.
Viber grew its user base by 120% in 2013, to 300 million. Viber will gain access to markets in which it does not currently have strong penetration, while Rakuten will benefit by gaining access to over 277 million new prospective Rakuten users in markets where Viber has an established presence, such as Western Europe.
Rakuten operates the largest online shopping portal in Japan and is the No. 2 e-retailer in all of Asia by sales according to the Internet Retailer’s Asia 500. The company acquired U.S. online discount retailer Buy.com in 2010. It later renamed the retailer Rakuten Shopping and converted it into an online marketplace that hosts other merchants’ shops but does not sell on its own behalf, in the model of Rakuten Japan.
Rakuten has been building out its digital services over the last two years, starting with its acquisition of e-reader and e-book provider Kobo Inc. for $350 million in 2012. Since then, it has also bought two streaming video services, Spanish Wuaki.tv and Palo Alto-based Viki Inc. Today, Rakuten offers 40 Internet services associated with its Rakuten Super Points rewards program, which has roughly 225 million members worldwide. With Viber, the retailer will bring many of those services together onto one platform with single login for members. The acquisition also illustrates a fundamental shift in Rakuten’s strategic direction, which is mobile-first.
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November 8, 2011 by MARK BROHAN Research Director
The value of the all-cash deal is $315 million.
Japan-based Rakuten Inc. keeps on buying up companies it believes will transform it into a global online retailer powerhouse.
This time the merchandising category is the lucrative electronic books and digital content market and the acquisition is Kobo Inc., the e-book reader maker and content provider that’s also a unit of Toronto-based retailer Indigo Books & Music No. 177 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Rakuten, which acquired U.S. e-retailer Buy.com in 2010 will acquire Kobo for $315 million in cash.
Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal e-book reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies.
Kobo, which in July launched its first overseas venture in Germany, agreed to be acquired because a bigger organization could help Kobo diversify and grow quicker against bigger rivals such as Barnes & Noble, which makes and markets the Nook e-reader, and Amazon.com, which develops and sells the Kindle e-reader.
Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market and one of the world’s largest eBook stores with over 2.5 million titles. This transaction will greatly strengthen position in current markets and allow to diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.
Kobo was increasingly an also-ran in the U.S. e-book reader market with only 6% market share in April 2011, according to a survey by e-commerce software firm Elastic Path reported by research firm eMarketer. But Kobo commanded 36% of the market in its home country of Canada in August 2011, according to a survey by market research firm Ipsos.
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Japan’s Rakuten to buy U.K.-based online retailer Play.com
September 21, 2011 by Thad Rueter
The acquisition marks the latest global e-commerce investment for the owner of Buy.com
Japan-based Rakuten Inc. today said it will buy U.K. e-commerce operator Play.com for 25 million pounds (US$39 million).
The acquisition of the retailer, which sells music, DVDs, books, consumer electronics, office equipment, mobile phones, toys and other products, marks the latest global e-commerce investment by Rakuten, which in 2010 bought U.S. e-retailer Buy.com Inc.
Play.com, No. 26 in the Internet Retailer Europe 300 Guide, had online sales of $660 million last year, up 18% from the year before. Buy.com is No. 32 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
“The U.K. market is one of Europe’s largest and most mature e-commerce markets. Play.com is not only a pioneer in the market, but also one of the U.K.’s most successful e-commerce businesses,” says Hiroshi Mikitani, chairman and CEO of the Japan-based e-marketplace operator. “We aim to leverage our e-commerce strength and experience to further expand and develop Play.com’s business model and channel its loyal user base, merchants, and deep product offerings into Rakuten’s global e-commerce network.”
Rakuten says it will buy up all of Play.com’s stock.
Earlier this month, Rakuten was part of a group of investors that raised $100 million for Russia-based online retailer Ozon.ru, which, like Play.com, sells a wide variety of products. The investment followed Rakuten’s purchases in June of a 75% stake in Brazil-based Ikeda, which sells e-commerce technology and services to more than 100 of the largest online retailers in that country. Rakuten this year also acquired 80% of Germany-based Tradoria GmbH, which sells an e-commerce platform. In 2010, Rakuten bought France-based e-commerce operator PriceMinister.
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