Last fall, Quartz considered turning to investors to weather the storm. One investment pitch reviewed by New York Times reporters said the company was seeking to raise between $2 million and $3 million at a valuation of $20 million.
Mr. Seward committed $100,000 of his own money to the round, according to the pitch, and was planning to ask readers to invest by buying cryptocurrency tokens. Quartz also sought recognition as a so-called B Corp, or benefit corporation, a distinction granted to socially conscious companies.
This year, Quartz hired Grimes, McGovern Associates, an advisory firm, to pitch media companies on an outright acquisition of the property, the people said.
Mr. Spanfeller said plans call for Quartz to be profitable by the end of the year. Quartz should receive additional readers from referral links embedded on other websites owned by the company, which would increase the site’s advertising revenue.
Quartz was co-founded by Mr. Seward in 2012 as a business news site with about 20 journalists under the auspices of Atlantic Media, the publisher of the magazine The Atlantic. The site was sold in 2018 to Uzabase, a Japanese firm, in a deal that amounted to about $86 million. But the pandemic shrank advertising revenue, and Uzabase cut nearly half of Quartz’s staff. After two years of ownership, it put the publication up for sale.
Mr. Seward bought Quartz in November 2020 and took it private. The website has expanded its paying subscriber base to around 25,000, from fewer than 18,000 in April 2020.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/business/media/quartz-sale.html
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