Joseph Phua
Turn Capital, the family office of Singaporean entrepreneur Joseph Phua, has agreed to acquire the assets of the popular Taiwanese news site Apple Daily. While the transaction details remain confidential, media reports have pegged the deal size between US$30 million and US$60 million.
According to Phua, who has successfully built Southeast Asia’s leading dating platform Paktor and Asian live-streaming entertainment unicorn 17LIVE, the aim is to transform the business digitally and venture into new markets in Southeast Asia and beyond. He has raised over US$200 million funds from more than 50 investors, including Vertex Ventures, Pavilion Capital, Infinity Ventures, KTB in Korea, Appworks, and several Indonesian MNCs.
In this interview, Phua discusses the deal, its objective, the opportunities and its expansion plans.
Edited excerpts:
Can you share the details of the acquisition?
Sure. So, we are acquiring the Taiwanese digital assets of Apple Daily from the Taiwanese arm of media company Next Digital Limited. These are primarily the technology assets, including the mobile app and website.
These are precious assets because they generate hundreds of millions of page views monthly. It’s one of the top three media sites in the country in terms of page views and subscriptions. It also has the largest Twitter fan base there.
We want to help transform the business model of this traffic. I have been in the media and internet space for the last ten years. Building sustainable business models around traffic is what I do day in and day out. When I see this type of stickiness and retention, it means the audience is very loyal. The asset with the demographic of middle to the high-end type of income status becomes precious traffic in a market with high ARPU (average revenue per user) from gaming.
When I was first approached for this potential deal, the page traffic was the first thing I looked into. Not just about the deal value, or current value, but about the inherent untapped potential.
Over the last ten years, we dealt with millions of users. In terms of building sustainable business models, we’ve processed billions of dollars globally.
In terms of the value, these are essential — solid traffic, loyal audience, and high disposable income audience. It’s a very fertile market when it comes to building digital media businesses.
How long has the deal been in the works?
I’ve been looking into media assets to acquire for five years. Since 2016, when I first merged my company Paktor with 17 LIVE, I’ve been looking at media assets.
In terms of negotiation and discussions, it has been a few months. But how long has this interest been? It has been at least six to seven years already. I’ve always been looking for assets to acquire.
There are some other popular news sites in Taiwan, such as China Times and Liberty Times. Then why Apple Daily?
No, I’ve always been looking for traffic and different video assets. We are actively acquiring and talking with at least two other high-traffic generation sources in Taiwan and three in Asia for investments or acquisitions by my family office. We are always on the lookout for media assets as long as the price is right and the asset is valuable.
How does the Apple Daily acquisition align with Turn Capital’s goals?
If you look at our past acquisitions, their operations were not only within our wholly-owned assets but they also collaborated with our shareholders and partners.
For example, after Turn Capital acquired SoundOn, Taiwan Mobile invested in it and became its second-largest shareholder. SoundOn now works with the telco’s music platform MyMusic to cross-seed our podcast content. SoundOn processes three billion+ listens of podcasts every year.
Likewise, with the traffic that Apple Daily generates, we can work with the other assets we currently control to cross-pollinate and potentially collaborate.
For example, I have traffic that comes over to you, and I help you acquire traffic and then in the process, you make money, and we can have a revenue-sharing model which allows me to diversify the business model further. Then it doesn’t become a pure advertising model for Apple news media.
Are you going to rebrand Apple Daily? What will happen to its employees once the deal gets through?
We are transitioning the business and do not have immediate rebranding plans at the moment. The key is to ensure we build a sustainable business through adapting the traffic across models.
We are working with the seller to engage with the employees, and we will work towards rehiring as many of the employees as possible.
How is Apple Daily’s loyal readers reacting to the acquisition?
The reaction has relatively been neutral.
My wife is Taiwanese and our two sons were born in Taiwan. Almost all the businesses I have built or acquired in the last ten years have ties with Taiwan, and I have reinvested heavily into my teams in Taiwan; I merged Paktor with 17LIVE, a Taiwanese live-streaming company. In just 2021, I acquired SoundOn and Dapp Pocket crypto solutions both Taiwanese companies. I very much consider Taiwan my second home.
The important thing to note here is that we plan to retain most of the editorial team, so content generation which is the key product that the readers consume will stay the same. So are the people who generate the content. From that perspective, that integrity is kept.
At the same time, Turn Capital is solely focused on digital transformation, and building a healthy company with strong financials. We are very interested in cultivating sustainable value in the traffic.
Our interest lies in creating a very news media outlet that embraces technology in its true form. We can create a very sustainable business that continues to grow its business in its markets and develop a very healthy lifecycle for its employees.
Do you have plans to infuse capital into Apple Daily?
We are open to raising capital in the future from various financial investors, as raising additional capital for the company will enable us to invest in the workforce, invest in training, invest in building new products and expand beyond the local market. All fundraising activities will be subject to Taiwan government regulations.
With any newly raised capital in the future, we’d be able to hire more people, invest in new markets, train their employees, and build new products, so this will be very good for the company.
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Taiwan welcomes foreign capital and investment into their workforce and everything, so this is highly possible, but this is subject to future discussion.
Can you share some of the business models you have in mind for Apple Daily? Do you have plans to launch it in other Southeast Asian markets?
Cross-ecosystem pollination of assets and traffic and building partnerships through other partners’ business sources are being explored.
In terms of expansion, we want to take Apple Daily to other markets. I do not believe there should be borders when it comes to tech businesses. The borders are artificial because you have a geographical constraints — from logistics to employee base to all these different things.
If you look at our other businesses, for instance, Paktor. It was started in Singapore and then expanded into 11 markets, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and the US.
I believe that the restructured reinvented and redefined product of Apple news media will transcend geographical barriers into new markets.
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The post ‘We want to create a news media outlet that embraces tech in its true form’: Joseph Phua on Apple Daily Taiwan’s assets acquisition appeared first on e27.