Is TechCrunch Worth $100 Million?

There has been a great deal written about the 24/7 Wall St. piece on the value of big blogs. While we put a value of $100 million on Huffington Post, we did not offer a value for TechCrunch.

But, it is worth a lot. It recently topped the BusinessWeek list of favorite blogs. Technorati says that almost 145,000 blogs like to the TechCrunch site.

In 2006, The Wall Street Journal wrote that TechCrunch has revenue of $120,000 a month. And "TechCrunch had about a million global page views in September, compared with 13 million for CNET News, according to comScore Networks Inc."

TechCrunch is now building a conference business and expanding its network of blogs. It probably fair to guess that it has grown to a revenue run rate of $5 million. To believe that the figure could double to $10 million in 2008 is not unreasonable.

Most analysis of the value of TechCrunch is based on what a financial model says it is worth. But, that is not an accurate way to make the evaluation. The real question is what someone would pay. Rupert Murdoch will pay $5 billion for Dow Jones (DJ). Its operating income in 2007 will be about $150 million. So, he is willing to pay 33 times operating income. If TechCrunch as $2 million in operating income this year, a comparable valuation would be $66 million.

Over on the Facebook side of town, industry experts put the company’s revenue at $150 million for 2007. If Microsoft (MSFT) is willing to buy 5% for $500 million, the company is worth $10 billion, about 66 times revenue. By the way, Chinese search engine company Baidu (BIDU) trades for 67 times revenue. And, it is a public company.

Is TechCrunch worth $100 million. In this environment, it may be worth more. Particularly if a larger company really needs it.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.