Cint is going private at less than a tenth of the roughly $3 billion valuation it commanded five years ago as the 28-year-old business continues its turnaround, CEO Patrick Comer exclusively tells Axios. Why it matters: The move comes amid a broader shift across the media measurement industry, with Nielsen and IAS going private and DoubleVerify set to join them if its sale to Nielsen closes. Driving the news: Cint, a research tech platform that connects companies with survey respondents around the world, on Tuesday completed its acquisition by a consortium led by private equity firm Triton Partners.
Cint shares stopped trading on Aug. 7 on the Nasdaq Stockholm, which it joined in 2021. The deal values Cint's outstanding shares at roughly 2.1 billion Swedish krona, or less than $300 million. Triton's offer was at a 42.5% premium to Cint's closing share price on April 24, the last day of trading before the deal was announced.
Flashback: Comer founded research technology company Lucid before selling it to Cint for roughly $1.1 billion in 2021. Comer became Cint's chairman after the acquisition and returned to an operating role as CEO in September 2024 to help turn around the company. The big picture: Part of that decline reflects a broader collapse in some tech valuations since their 2021 peak.
But Comer was blunt about Cint's own struggles. "We fumbled the merger and the execution of the business over a number of years," Comer says. "The take-private is literally the signal that that era is over, and now we're starting to build the future again." Private ownership will give Cint more flexibility to invest more freely in talent and products and manage fewer competing priorities than it faced as a Swedish public company, Comer says.
Comer says the market wasn't seeing the growth in Cint's measurement business while worrying about whether the exchange side would recover. Media measurement sales grew 22.8% on a constant-currency basis in the first quarter, the company reported in April. State of play: Cint is the latest media measurement company to leave public markets.
Nielsen was taken private in 2022 by an investor group led by Elliott Investment Management's Evergreen Coast Capital and Brookfield Business Partners in a roughly $16 billion deal. Integral Ad Science was acquired by private equity firm Novacap for roughly $1.9 billion last year. Nielsen recently struck a deal to acquire DoubleVerify for around $2.15 billion.
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