R.L. Polk & Company recently announced it is putting the company up for sale. A private, family owned business, Polk has built a business around an impressive data asset. The eventual buyers will need to be creative in order to realize full value in the current environment where all things relating to clicks are valued higher than most offline data.
Polk is a private, single industry company focused on the automotive data market with over 1,200 employees and approximately $360 million in revenue. Automotive is a huge industry and Polk has been its dominant data provider in the US. Despite its near monopoly position in US automotive registration data, it has not been able to extend this capability to other major automotive markets around the world largely due to governmental restrictions. Polk made a successful acquisition of CarFax several years ago which primarily serves US consumers and dealers. This acquisition extended Polk’s reach into the US B2C market and has provided the company with revenue growth.
Source: Outsell Inc. http://www.outsellinc.com/share/insights/12059
