Informa’s the Industry Giant; Endeavor Wants to Rival Them

By: Christiana Sciaudone

If Endeavor Business Media’s Chris Ferrell gets his way, his company could someday go up against Informa as one of the biggest B2B media and events groups on the planet.

Informa has been one of the most acquisitive companies in the industry over the past several years, picking up assets like TechTarget, Ascential and Tarsus. It reaches more than 50 million opted-in professionals through the newly-named Informa TechTarget alone, which houses its B2B media and currently has a market cap of about $750 million and is expected as a newly combined company to generate revenue of $500 million. That division comprises over 100 brands and more than 1,000 experts, analysts and consultants.

That compares to Endeavor’s 80-plus media brands and a reach of 12 million professionals with about 670 employees. The company, founded in 2017, expects to reach $160 million in revenue for 2024 with just under 20% margins and about $30 million of EBITDA. It is backed by Resolute Capital Partners and has done more than 21 strategic acquisitions.

The B2B media industry needs a strategic buyer outside of just Informa for financial buyers, ie, private equity funds, to have confidence in the liquidity of the market in order to invest, Endeavor Chief Executive Officer Ferrell said. And he’s ready to join hands with a willing partner to build the newest industry giant—and said there are more small B2B media and events businesses on the market than at any time since he entered the business nearly eight years ago.

“There continues to be an interesting opportunity that a number of the big companies that you know, the $100 million of revenue and up companies in the U.S. are really sort of late in their holding periods with their private equity owners,” Ferrell said. “There is still an opportunity if there’s a financial buyer who has both the ability and the willingness to build a really large company, to roll up some of those into a single entity. I just haven’t found the financial partner that has both of those things yet.”

Asked if Endeavor will be the next Informa, Ferrell said: “It could be with the right partner.”

In June, AMO reported that Endeavor was in talks with new private equity firms to buy out Resolute, its original funder.

2025 Revenue

Companies with under $20 million in annual revenue are on the market amid a challenging environment where ad clients increasingly want a diverse array of products that can be hard to offer without scale.

“I’ve seen a number of those companies come to market,” Ferrell said. “Some of them would make sense for us if we can reach an agreement. I’m not really looking to expand outside of the verticals that I’m in on the media side.”   

Events are increasingly important for Endeavor, as they are for all media businesses post-pandemic, but Ferrell is keen to keep a balance in the portfolio.

“Events has been an area that I have considered sort of underrepresented in our revenue mix,” Ferrell said. “My focus around acquisitions recently has been on acquiring events—the one transaction we did this past this year was the Scranton Gillette Communications assets. And about half of what came over was events.” 

Ferrell is now looking for events that fit within the industries that they serve on the media side where they don’t currently have any.

“It’s an important sort of leg of the revenue stool,” he said. Also important is diversification of industries. 

“The reason that Endeavor is in multiple verticals is because a single industry can have a downturn, and if you’re only in that one industry, you are going to have a downturn, right?” Ferrell said. 

The revenue mix for Endeavor is roughly a quarter each in print ads, digital media ads and marketing solutions. Events bring in about 20% of total sales and research 5%. 

Orders for 2025 are pacing higher than 2024, and Ferrell is cautiously optimistic that it could be a somewhat better year. Absent doing a significant acquisition in 2025, financial figures should be about the same next year as they are this year, he said. Endeavor continues to be relatively print-heavy in part because Ferrell wants to be able to offer advertisers a broad array of options. 

“It has lower margins than digital media, but the way we do it, it’s still a profitable part of the business,” Ferrell said.