JCOM made 8 small acquisitions in Dec

This, as you know, is one of my smaller positions.
Saul

j2 Global, Inc. (JCOM), the global provider of Internet services, today announced that it closed eight acquisitions in December, one for its Media Division (previously announced) and seven for its Cloud Services Division.

These additions grow the company’s global customer base, provide access to new markets, and expand j2’s product lineup. The acquisitions include:

Scene, LLC d/b/a Ookla (Media, USA)
Newrise Corp. (Fax, USA)
Arion IT Limited (Backup, Ireland)
Technology Partners LLC (Backup, USA)
Quantum RBS Inc. (Backup, Canada)
Comendo Security A/S and other affiliates (Email Security, Denmark)
Stay Secure (NCSG Holding AB) (Email Security, Sweden)
TestudoData LLC (Email Security, USA)
j2 also adds European offices in Copenhagen, Denmark and Stockholm, Sweden. The company’s footprint now includes 12 offices worldwide.

“We successfully executed on our fourth quarter M&A plan,” said j2’s CEO, Hemi Zucker. “j2’s global acquisition team hit its mark again, with media, backup, email security, and fax deals across North America and Europe. Our ability to opportunistically and consistently deliver on our M&A roadmap, while we organically grow our businesses, is a strategic differentiator for us.”

“Our pipeline is strong heading into 2015,” said Scott Turicchi, j2’s President and CFO. “We enter the year with great momentum, targeting a wide range of global opportunities in both the Cloud Services and Digital Media spaces.”

Terms of the individual acquisitions were not disclosed and the financial impact to j2 is not expected to be material.

Interesting company. Was once in a startup where we were looking to sell an old dialup service to jcom. The service was sold through the phone company and although almost no one used it, customers still paid through their phone bill. It was a little cash cow, but the ops was a pain to maintain. We had a new video service and wanted to reduce ops labor on the old service. Jcom liked the cash flow but couldn’t integrate to their ops.

Similar to how computer associates used to buy mature SW companies and milk the license revenue.

I think if jcom can gain economy of scale in their acquisitions, keep the ops low, and maintain a level of cash flow in these niche services, they can do well.

Don’t know how supportive the execs are to stockholders.

Thanks Saul,
Iain