Hamburg, Germany based eprofessional GmbH, probably the largest Search Engine Optimization Company in Germany has been sold to Zanox. Co-founder Christian Petersen (pictured) and Michael Scheland started the company in the wild dotcom boom times and through endurance, luck and skill managed to keep it afloat in the years after that. In the last years the company was expanding nicely and won many brand names (with their online budget) in Germany.

Now Zanox - a big affiliate marketing company has snapped it up and may find it a valuable addition to the existing mix of solutions it provides to consumer brands all over Europe (and recently also in the US). Zanox itself is rumored to sell itself or go IPO soon according to A:C:

"The newswire cites un-named sources in the article, which estimates that Zanox is worth between €250M to €350M, based on Zanox's EBITDA numbers (which are not publicly available) and a mutliple of 20X net profit (based on the multiples apparently enjoyed by its peers, such as recently floated TradeDoubler in Sweden and CommissionJunction in the US.)"

The sale is also good news for battered early stage VC BMP. BMP did many investments in the boom times (incl. my ex-company newtron and was scrambling for liquidity in 2001 and 2002. Now they see their coffers filled again:

"bmp AG (ISIN DE3304200) today sold its 25.5 % stake in eprofessional GmbH (acquired in 2000), the leading German search engine-marketing company to ZANOX.de AG, the market leader for success-based multi-channel commerce. The sale is still subject to the suspensive condition of the registration by Zanox of a capital increase in connection with the overall transaction.

The purchase price will be paid to bmp 100 % in cash - the existing silent partnership will simultaneously be repaid. bmp will thus receive a total liquidity return of around 4 million EUR.

Through the sale of shares in YOC AG and Bankier.pl S.A. within the framework of their stock market listing, as well as the conclusion of the sale of eprofessional-Trade, bmp expects a turnover in the second quarter of a minimum of 8 million EUR and a profit in excess of 4 Million EUR."

Congratulations Christian and Michael!