GoCompare acquires MyVoucherCodes in £36.5m deal
Insurance comparison website GoCompare has acquired voucher code website MyVoucherCode in a deal worth £36.5m ($48.8m). The firm said the acquisition is part of a strategy of appealing to consumers looking to save on a variety of products. MyVoucherCode has 45 million visitors to its website each year. MyVoucherCode's existing management is understood to be remaining in place.

Price comparison website group GoCompare.com is buying the parent company of discount site MyVoucherCodes in a £36.5million deal.

GoCompare said that the tie-up with The Global Voucher Group would boost its mission to 'help people everywhere save time and money', while upping its cross-selling opportunities.

MyVoucherCodes is one of the country's biggest online voucher code websites with eight million email subscribers and around 45 million visits a year.

Deal: Price comparison website group GoCompare.com is buying the parent company of discount site MyVoucherCodes

GoCompare, which has seen its share price rise over 5 per cent to 104.63p this morning, will also acquire the company's subsidiaries, which include food discovery app Happiour and email marketing firm Revivve.

Matthew Crummack, chief executive of GoCompare, said: 'We are making strong progress towards our ambition to become the 'go-to' place for savvy savers to find great deals, and for service providers to reach and acquire customers.'

Existing management at MyVoucherCodes are set to remain in their posts after the acquisition. The deal is expected to boost GoCompare's 2018 earnings.

Last month, Newport-based GoCompare, which is well known for its advertisements, fought off a takeover move from ZPG, which is the company behind uSwitch and Zoopla.

Rejecting an offer of 110p per share, GoCompare said ZPG had undervalued its business. In November, ZPG confirmed it was thwarting its attempt to buy CoCompare for good.

GoCompare, which was spun out from esure and listed on the London Stock Exchange in November last year, said today's acquisition will allow it to offer deals and incentives to people who use both comparison and voucher websites.

In a trading update alongside the deal announcement, GoCompare said it expects its underlying earnings for this year to be above expectations, with revenues around 5 per cent higher near the £149million mark.

For this year, MyVoucherCodes is expected to generate a pre-tax profit of £4million, with revenues of around £11.8million.

The majority of its revenues are derived from the UK, but it also operates in Australia, Ireland, Germany and France.

In its final report following an investigation into price comparison websites, the UK's competition watchdog said all such sites need to make it clearer how they make their money and to take steps to protect people's personal data.

As part of a further investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority said it is 'opening a competition law investigation into how one site has set up its contracts with insurers, because it suspects this may result in higher home insurance prices.' The site in question has not been named.