Josef Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive officer of AmericanGreetings.com, said the conclusion of the acquisition is a watershed
event for the company. The addition of Egreetings will allow us to increase
and diversify our audience with popular and established brands, Mandelbaum
said. We are also very excited to continue and hope to expand the exclusive
relationship Egreetings has established with the Microsoft Network. This
acquisition adds to the momentum we’ve been building since last year with both
consumers and advertisers, and should contribute to our goal of becoming
profitable by the fourth quarter of this calendar year.
In the offer, which commenced Feb. 12, 2001 and expired at 3 p.m. EST on
March 19, 2001, a total of 31,747,524 shares of Egreetings common stock, or
94.89 percent of the outstanding shares, were validly tendered and not
withdrawn, all of which were accepted for payment.
Each share of Egreetings common stock not tendered was converted into the
right to receive 85 cents in cash, without interest, pursuant to a merger of
Egreetings with a wholly owned subsidiary of AmericanGreetings.com. The total
value of the transaction was approximately $28.4 million.
Mandelbaum said that both Egreetings and Beat Greets, its spin-off site,
will continue to operate as separate brands. According to February’s
Nielsen//NetRatings for home and work Internet users, AmericanGreetings.com
was the 17th most visited site on the web with 13.2 million unique visitors,
while Egreetings was 71st with 4.6 million unique visitors. Accounting for the
6.4 percent overlap in the two audiences, the combined company would have been
the 12th most visited site on the web in February with 16.8 million unique
visitors.
