The Edinburgh-based company has now made three acquisitions in 2011 following on from the February purchase of IndianDating.com for £125,000 and two German websites for £2.5 million in June.
Speaking recently to MandA Deals, chief executive officer of Cupid, Bill Dobbie, said that the business had achieved its goal of generating over half of its revenues through overseas growth.
He added: ‘A year ago we were one tenth the size of Meetic [European dating website merged into Match.com], whereas now we’ve cut that to one third.’
The most recent deal includes AondeNamoro.com, a ‘traditional’ dating site and SolteirosComFilhos.com, a site for single parents. The combined websites have 1.4 million members.
Dobbie says that the acquisition will provide a ‘great opportunity’ for AIM-listed Cupid to gain a foothold in Brazil.
He adds: ‘This is a market which we see as having strong medium to long term potential for Cupid.
‘We are confident that, through a combination of our experience in online dating marketing and the support and local knowledge of the team in Rio de Janeiro, we can continue to improve these sites’ performance.’
Under the terms of the deal an initial £350,000 is payable within the next two weeks, with an additional £115,000 conditional on the achievement of business targets over the next six months.
International business development director of Cupid, Max Polyakov, comments: ‘We believe this acquisition represents an excellent opportunity for the company in line with our stated strategy to increase the proportion of revenues from markets outside the UK.
‘We continue to look for opportunities to expand into further regions where we believe strong growth potential exists.’
According to a statement, the newly acquired Brazilian websites had revenues of £120,000 and a profit of £80,000 during 2010. The two sites have been under the ownership and management of Brazilian dating entrepreneur Edgard Nogueira, who will continue to work with Cupid over the next six months.
Other websites under Cupid ownership include flirt.com, benaughty.com, girlsdateforfree.com and datetheuk.com.
