After two years of wooing, Angie’s List has finally agreed to be acquired by IAC. After the deal closes, Angie’s List will combined with HomeAdvisor, IAC’s home services marketplace, into a new public company called ANGI Homeservices.
The merger values Angie’s List at $8.50 per share, or about $500 million in total. This represents a 44.3 percent premium over the stock’s closing price on Monday, but is less than the $8.75 a share IAC offered (and Angie’s List rejected) back in November 2015.
This was one of multiple bids IAC, whose other companies include Tinder, made for Angie’s List, but its board thought $8.75 a share, which represented just a 10 percent premium over its stock price at the time, “dramatically undervalued” the company.
Angie’s List continued to struggle, however, despite dropping its membership fee and moving to a freemium model one year ago, as part of a growth strategy by new CEO Scott Durchslag. Though Angie’s List, founded in 1995 by William Oesterle and Angie Hicks, is one of the oldest and most respected review sites, it had difficulty finding its…