LendingTree’s uncommon interest in internet M&A 

Contact:  Scott Denne

A sudden streak of dealmaking for LendingTree has culminated in today’s purchase of MagnifyMoney.com as the financial comparison site angles to accelerate its growth beyond mortgages. That streak makes LendingTree an outlier as few other Internet companies have been in a buying mood lately.

MagnifyMoney marks LendingTree’s third acquisition since November, when it bought CompareCards, a deal that ended a 12-year M&A drought for the buyer. In the waning years of that drought, LendingTree’s top line has expanded (up 51% last year to $384m) while new lines of business have sprouted. Five or six years ago, almost 90% of revenue came from its mortgage comparison product – now it’s less than half. MagnifyMoney, which aggregates offers from multiple types of financial services, further diversifies the business – as did CompareCards and last week’s reach for DepositAccounts.com.

The kind of transactions that LendingTree has been printing – adding new services while soaking up smaller competitors – has become rare. According to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, consolidation among consumer internet vendors has declined. Only 66 deals have been inked this year, compared with 101 at this point last year, a number that itself was down 50% from 2015.

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Posted in M&A