Kennet sells goviral to AOL

Kimberly Romaine
31 January 2011

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Growth equity investor Kennet Partners has sold branded video specialist goviral to AOL Europe for $96.7m. The sale is the second in three months for the backer, which sold online buying community BuyVIP to Amazon in October.

Kennet will have made a handsome IRR on goviral, having pumped just €6.5m into the business less than two years ago in March 2009. Those funds served the sole purpose of buying out another shareholder, meaning management's stake was not diluted. The business was entirely bootstrapped, according to Kennet.

AOL has paid $74.1m upfront and will pay the remaining $22.6m over a two-year period following completion of the deal.

goviral was founded in Denmark in 2005 but moved its headquarters to London in 2006.

At the time of the 2009 deal, online video was expected to grow faster than any other creative type in Europe, increasing more than tenfold from €87m (4% of display ad spending) in 2006 to €929m (20% of display ad spending) in 2012, according to Jupiter research.