Meredith Continues To Restructure, Offloading MXM

In keepingwith its strategy to focus on core operations, Meredith Corporation MDP has decided to offload Meredith Xcelerated Marketing ("MXM") to Accenture. Management believes that this digital and customer relationship marketing agency will better integrate with Accenture Interactive. MXM is a creative agency, which develops and delivers custom content and customer relationship marketing programs for many of the world's leading brands.

The company did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction. The company believes that the deal will not have any major impact on its fiscal 2018 financial results.

The news of divestiture followed Meredith's announcement of new sales and marketing structure for its National Media Group and strategic plans to smoothly integrate its recent buyout of Time Inc. This strategy mainly involves the reviewing of media asset portfolio and divestiture of non-core brands; augmenting advertising as well as circulation feat of the Time Inc. properties; increasing revenue and profits of Time Inc. digital assets; and generating cost synergies of $400-$500 million annually in the first two years of operations.

On completion of portfolio review, Meredith intends to vend the TIME, Sports Illustrated, Money and Fortune magazine brands. This follows the recent divestiture of Time Inc. UK and Golf media brands. Meredith, which records 175 million American consumers every month, sold Time Inc. UK to Epiris.

Analysts believe that these endeavors will provide cushion to the stock that has declined 17.4% in the past three months against the industry's gain of 15.2%.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report