Brothers Edmund and Danny Truell have completed a substantial growth capital investment in Imagine Publishing to support the next phase of the multimedia publisher’s expansion.
Imagine Publishing is one of the UK’s fastest-growing multimedia content publishers. Formed in May 2005, it now publishes 19 regular print magazines, 50 digital apps, more than 250 bookazines, 29 websites and thousands of articles every month in the technology, videogames, photography and knowledge/science markets.
An Imagine magazine is purchased every ten seconds, and the Company this month won a Media Pioneer award at the Specialist Media Show for the “Content is King” digital strategy that has brought its content to all major mobile smartphone and tablet devices worldwide.
In the financial year to March 2013, Imagine delivered revenue of nearly GBP20m, and was recently named in the Sunday Times Profit Track 100 of the UK’s fastest-growing companies (with 63.04 per cent profit growth in FY 2009-12).
The latest investment from the Truell brothers will be used to accelerate Imagine’s global rollout into the major international markets, notably India, the US and Australia, and to cement its position as the leading global multimedia content provider.
The Truells have been investors in Imagine since inception, and following significant new investment will assume the majority shareholding, which sees the company’s co-founders Damian Butt (group managing director), Steven Boyd (group finance and commercial director) and Mark Kendrick (group creative director) each retain significant stakes in the business. HSBC has for the third time also provided debt facilities to give further balance sheet strength.
Edmund Truell says: “I’m delighted to continue to back and at a bigger scale an innovative management team who are true mobile device pioneers, being one of the first to put their content on the iPad, and the first to publish all their titles on every platform. The team is now ideally positioned to lead and transform the migration of published content to digital platforms worldwide.”
