As hinted at on Jan 3rd – Reported: Shutterstock and Getty Images explore a merger – it’s been confirmed today! Getty Images and Shutterstock will merge to form a ‘Premier Visual Content Company’.
• The combined company, which would have an enterprise value of approximately $3.7 billion will be named Getty Images Holdings, Inc and will continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “GETY”.
The new board of 11 people will include four from Shutterstock.
They say: ‘As a combined company, Getty Images and Shutterstock will offer a content library with greater depth and breadth for the benefit of customers, expanded opportunities for its contributor community and a reinforced commitment to the adoption of inclusive and representative content. Furthermore, the stronger financial profile of the combined company is expected to create increased capacity for product investment and innovation for customers in a fast‑evolving and highly competitive environment.’
Who’s in charge? Getty Images’s CEO, Craig Peters, will serve as CEO of the combined company. The combined company will have an eleven‑member Board of Directors, comprised of Getty Images CEO Craig Peters, six directors designated by Getty Images and four directors designated by Shutterstock, including Paul Hennessy, Shutterstock CEO. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the combined company will be Mark Getty, currently Chairman of Getty Images.
Some of the Strategic and Financial Benefits the companies are listing re the merger:
• Cutting‑edge innovation: Facilitates greater investment in innovative content creation, expanded event coverage, and customer‑facing technologies and capabilities such as search, 3D imagery and generative AI.
• Complementary portfolios: Creates a broader set of visual content products across still imagery, video, music, 3D and other asset types.
• Expanded opportunities for content creators: Provides contributors substantially greater opportunities to reach customers around the world.
• Strengthened balance sheet and greater cash flow generation: By deleveraging the combined balance sheet through the transaction and driving more robust cash flow, the combined company will be well positioned to accelerate debt repayment, reduce borrowing costs, and capitalize on new opportunities to create value for customers and stockholders.
• Significant synergies: Drives expected run rate synergies across SG&A and CAPEX between $150 million and $200 million achieved within the first three years post‑close, with approximately two‑thirds expected to be delivered within the first twelve to twenty‑four months.
This from the Getty Images and Shutterstock management:
“Today’s announcement is exciting and transformational for our companies, unlocking multiple opportunities to strengthen our financial foundation and invest in the future—including enhancing our content offerings, expanding event coverage, and delivering new technologies to better serve our customers,” said Craig Peters, CEO, Getty Images. “With the rapid rise in demand for compelling visual content across industries, there has never been a better time for our two businesses to come together. By combining our complementary strengths, we can better address customer opportunities while delivering exceptional value to our partners, contributors, and stockholders.”
“We are excited by the opportunities we see to expand our creative content library and enhance our product offering to meet diverse customer needs,” said Paul Hennessy, CEO, Shutterstock. “We expect the merger to produce value for the customers and stockholders of both companies by capitalizing on attractive growth opportunities to drive combined revenues, accelerating product innovation, realizing significant cost synergies and improving cash flow. We look forward to working closely with the Getty Images management team to complete the transaction and drive the next chapter of growth.”
• There’s a financials webcast re the merger at 8:30AM EST today here.
PAN/My thoughts: What does this deal mean for the licensing industry? We are receiving lots of emails and whatsapp messages and calls re the news …interesting stuff and lots and lots of questions.
Signing up subscription clients for stock and editorial will be the key push here. Editorial will be interesting, between the two agencies they now run most of the entertainment and sport content so where does this leave freelance news photographers, creative stock photographers …other photo agencies? …Will anyone else be added to the new company? Will other agencies considering merging?
The deal is going to cause issues for the mid-to-big size stock photo agencies – the fight for subscriptions will intensify, so feeding their contributors, staff and the office landlord will become a problem as competition grows. That said, there is enough room in the market at the moment for anyone with millions of images as the AI image need is growing and will not stop anytime soon.
Smaller stock photo libraries will be able to adapt quickly offering great customer service, fast delivery of single use images in the authentic image arena.
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