A Toronto-based private equity firm has acquired a majority stake in Benzinga, a financial media company headquartered in downtown Detroit whose early backers included Dan Gilbert.
The Beringer Capital deal, announced Monday, is expected to keep Benzinga’s operations and key staff in Detroit, according to Benzinga founder and CEO Jason Raznick, 43, who is keeping a “significant” ownership stake in the company.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, although it values the company at about $300 million, Raznick said, and Gilbert remains an investor.
Benzinga has about 150 content contributors, which includes its more than 75 full-time employees, of whom 60 live in Michigan, the company said.
Benzinga provides financial news as well as analytics content, such as stock earnings, for investors and online users of brokerages including Robinhood, TD Ameritrade and Fidelity Investments.
It sends out daily newsletters and has a premium service, Benzinga Pro, with monthly subscriber fees ranging from $99 to $347. Benzinga claims about 25 million readers each month and over 1 million subscribers for its emails.
“We are if not the largest, we’re one of the largest vendors of financial news to the North American brokerage space,” Raznick said. “We produce anywhere from 800 to 1,200 headlines a day, and then about 80 to 150 stories a day.”
The company also hosts several big events each year that bring in revenue, including the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards, Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference, Benzinga Global Small Cap Conference and the Benzinga Crypto Festival.
Beringer’s announcement says the private-equity firm hopes to continue growing Benzinga’s users and subscribers, and add more in-depth coverage while expanding business-to-business partnerships and trying new forms of media.
“To date, Benzinga has done a remarkable job of differentiating its offerings and building a vibrant, engaged community across its various platforms,” Perry Miele, chair and managing partner at Beringer Capital, said in a statement.
Raznick started Benzinga in 2010 in the basement of his Birmingham house as a blog-like platform for trading ideas for small-cap stocks. The origin of the company’s name was as a made-up word from his childhood.
Benzinga eventually moved into a Southfield office strip, and later in 2015, into the One Campus Martius building in Detroit.
© Salwan Georges, Detroit Free Press One Campus Martius building seen in 2015.
Raznick said the Beringer deal was the culmination of a five-month process that began after Benzinga received several unsolicited offers.
He declined to share Benzinga’s annual revenue, but said revenues have grown nearly 500% in the past three years.
“We are looking to expand,” Raznick said. “Why we did this was not just to cash out. To cash out, there were easier options.”
There are several other media companies in Beringer’s portfolio of past and current investments, including trade publication Adweek and real estate news website Inman.
Gil Ozir, managing partner at Beringer, said in a statement that his firm “has no plans to change the current staff and remains equally confident in Jason’s leadership, which has helped establish Benzinga as a financial information powerhouse over the past decade.”
