NEW YORK – Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE:NLSN), a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy, announced that it has successfully completed its acquisition of Arbitron Inc., an international media and marketing research firm.
“Our combined capabilities offer opportunities to measure unmeasured areas that are important to the industries and clients we serve, like streaming audio, out-of-home measurements for television consumption and deeper measurement of multicultural audiences in the U.S.”
“This is a great day for Nielsen and a natural step in our evolution,” said Nielsen Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun. “Arbitron will allow us to analyze and understand an additional two hours of the U.S. consumer’s day while bringing us another opportunity to provide advertisers with metrics on the effectiveness of the mediums that they advertise on.”
Arbitron is being rebranded Nielsen Audio and will be integrated into Nielsen’s U.S. Watch business segment, which provides information and insights primarily to the media and advertising industries across television, online, mobile and radio. With Arbitron, Nielsen now measures eight hours a day per person of dynamic media consumption.
“Our combined capabilities offer opportunities to measure unmeasured areas that are important to the industries and clients we serve, like streaming audio, out-of-home measurements for television consumption and deeper measurement of multicultural audiences in the U.S.,” said Calhoun. “Globally, this is an opportunity to expand our measurement of consumer behavior and introduce audio measurement capabilities in new markets.”
As previously disclosed, Nielsen entered into an agreement on December 17, 2012 to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Arbitron for $48 per share or a total of $1.3 billion purchase price, funded by cash on hand and recent debt financing. Nielsen expects $0.26 of accretion to adjusted net income per share during the first full year of operations, and $0.32 of accretion to adjusted net income per share during the second year, reflecting an incremental $0.06 in year two.
Nielsen will update its full year guidance to include the impact of the Arbitron acquisition during its Q3 2013 earnings conference call, which will be held October 23.
About Nielsen
Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE:NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence and mobile measurement. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.
