R.R. Donnelley paid 57 million dollars for Helium

When R.R. Donnelley bought Helium in June, no one outside the companies involved knew how much it had paid.  However, in RRD's quarterly report for the second quarter, filed on August 3, 2011, RRD disclosed that it paid $57 million (in addition to what it had already invested in Helium before).

That's less than the $100 million or so that Yahoo paid for Associated Content, but a lot more than I would have expected

(more after the jump)


From the quarterly report:

On June 21, 2011, the Company acquired Helium, Inc. (“Helium”), an online community offering publishers, catalogers and other customers stock and custom content, as well as a comprehensive range of editorial solutions. As the Company previously held a 23.7% equity investment in Helium, the purchase price for the remaining equity of Helium was $57.0 million net of cash acquired of $0.1 million and included an amount due from Helium of $1.1 million. The fair value of the Company’s previously held equity investment was $12.8 million ....

The operations of these acquired businesses [Helium and RRD's other recent acquisition, Journalism Online] are complementary to the Company’s existing products and services.... The ability to bundle Helium’s content development solutions with the Company’s complete offering of content delivery resources addresses customers’ needs across the full breadth of the supply chain. 

(Hat tip to Chris.)

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