Whatever happened to CMP?

When this decade dawned, the big three technology news publishers were International Data Group, Ziff-Davis and CMP Media. Now, Ziff-Davis has been split into multiple pieces, including this site (owned ultimately by CBS). And the initials “CMP” are nowhere to be found.

The business that brings you Information Week, Computer Reseller News and Electronic Engineering Times has not gone away. But it has moved about as far away from print in the space of four years as David Levin, the chief executive of United Business Media, can imagine and execute.

London-based United Business Media, then calling itself United News & Media, paid $920 million for CMP – in 1999. When tech pubs were flush with dotcom boom ad pages.

Five years later, CMP was still printing news on trees. In 2004, 73 percent of its revenue came from print, Levin told business publishers at the B-To-B World Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel Tuesday morning. Fourteen percent came from events, 12 percent from online.

Fast forward to the first half of this year. Out of $400 million in revenue, only 24  percent came from print. Forty percent came from events, 18% from online and 18% from data and services. Gone are titles such as Network Computing, Optimize, and SysAdmin, their content folded into remaining titles, such as Information Week. Circulation and frequency of other titles were reduced.

New “titles” online and in exhibitions are the replacements: Interop, Black Hat Light Reading, How Machines Work, Portelligent and Semiconductor Insights, for instances.All told, about $250 million was spent on 20 acquisitions affecting CMP. Companywide, $1.6 billion of assets were disposed of and more than $750 million spent on 59 different acquisitions. Decentralization replaced centralization. In this country, the CMP name essentially disappeared, as of February.

In its place are what Levin likes to call four “tiger” businesses, under the United Business Media rubric. When  you have this much change, a chief executive wants to get all hands focused on operations that have “vitality, ambition, hunger and commercial aggressiveness.”

On this side of the pond, in technology, the four “tigers” are: TechWeb, the online tech news umbrella under which content from Information Week can also be found; TechInsights, where EE Times, Semiconductor Insights and other units provide insight as well as marketing and consulting services to creators of electronics; Think Services, which tries to “connect communities” of game developers, call center operators and other tech professionals through events, publications, consulting and “innovative media” and the Everything Channel, which serves professional buyers and sellers of technology.

There’s been pain, with job cuts and closings. But, he notes, the cumulative return on the acquisitions has been 13%, in the first year. The implication: Change pays off.

Earnings per share? 15.1 British pence in 2002, 29 in 2004, 52.3 in 2007 – and 29.4 in the first half of this year.

Levin wants to keep the balance sheet strong, so he can write checks for more acquisitions, while rivals position themselves to exit the tech news and trade publishing business. The company’s moving onto new turf (India, Brazil, Macao, Abu Dhabi) as it tries to step up its international footprint (50% of revenue is still from the U.S.).

And it’s moving well beyond tech, into fields such as health care, jewelry, and transportation. Who owns the Official Airline Guide now? United Business Media.

What did he pay, in 2006? $5 million, he says. What did it sell for in 1988? $750 million.

United Business also dropped out of the running for KnowledgeStorm, an online research service aimed at IT professionals. That went for an estimated $58 million. Levin says his in-house techies fashioned a replacement for 5% of the cost.

Levin, watching the tape, figures United Business Media overall is now  worth $2.6 billion now. Print continues to shrink, even though there are isolated exceptions. Information Week, he says, has more ad pages this year than last. Of course, in theory, it took over pages aimed for Network Computing and Optimize.

His new mantra: “Small is beautiful. Go for agility and speed. Buy off-the-shelf any time you can. Don’t do anything bespoke.”

That's British-tailor-speak for ... "don't do anything custom-made."