Vice Media to sell 10 per cent stake to A&E networks for $250m
Vice Media has revealed they are nearing the sale of a 10 per cent stake to A&E Networks, after a period of negotiating with various suitors.
A&E Networks is jointly owned by the Walt Disney and Hearst Corporation, and will invest $250m (£150m) in Vice, valuing the growing international media company at $2.5bn.
Vice has built up a global audience with its youth-orientated journalism and increasingly through daring international reporting hosted on YouTube.
The company currently has 25 offices across six continents as well as 8m subscribers and over 1bn views across 10 YouTube channels. Earlier this month Vice posted a series of dispatches from Syria featuring unprecedented access to the terrorist Islamic State organisation, access no other media company has been able to match.
A&E's purchase, as reported by the Financial Times, comes a year after Vice sold a 5 per cent stake to Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox for $70m.
According to the New York Times, Time Warner had been in discussion with Vice about buying a 40 per cent stake in the company, but talks stalled due to disputes over Vice's valuation.
A&E Networks own 10 cable channels in the US such as Lifetime and the History Channel. It is currently unclear whether or not Vice will continue to produce its news show for HBO, to which it has committed a third and fourth season.
The hefty valuation and A&E's large investment is not just down to Vice's impressive gonzo journalism. The company generates large chunks of its revenues through arms such as AdVICE, Vice's in-house creative services agency. Co-founder Shane Smith told Business Insider earlier this year that he expects Vice to report revenues of $500m at the end of this year, and $1bn by the end of 2016.