The tech media giant IDG may be on the cusp of change, with Goldman Sachs shopping it to prospective buyers two years after the death of founder Patrick McGovern; but meanwhile Michael Friedenberg, CEO of IDG Communications isn't sitting around twiddling his thumbs. In a recent interview, Friedenberg talks about how IDG is evolving its product and customer relationships in the face of continuous change in digital publishing.

IDG Communications, which publishes PC World and Computerworld, among scores of other titles, is one of three divisions of $3.75 billion IDG Incorporated, the privately held international tech media and tech investing company that had 13,200 employees in 2014.  Besides IDG Communications is IDG Ventures which is a combination of venture funds and partners who invest internationally and IDC which runs a market research and market intelligence business. Although the company doesn’t discuss the relative sizes of the divisions, those who are familiar with the company believe that IDG Communications and IDC are each about $1 billion in revenues and the venture arm is the remainder.

For sale?

Friedenberg is most interested in talking about the operational issues of "growth" and "relevance" and  not the existential issue of the company’s future ownership.  Since McGovern's death,  IDG's ownership has moved through the McGovern estate to benefit the McGovern Foundation. The company retained Goldman Sachs “to explore strategic options” says Friedenberg, objecting to a question about the company "being in play."

A source who is familiar with the situation but who asked to remain unidentified, says that despite the careful language about “options,” the company is most definitely looking for a buyer. “In fact, the objective would be to sell all the divisions sold as one unit, as stock, rather than selling the assets separately, probably because of the tax benefits” for the family foundation.  This person says that IDG has been global for most of its history -- ahead of many other companies in the industry -- and this makes it especially attractive to the current M&A market. Even if the company was sold as one piece, the new owner would likely break up the pieces.  “Most outsiders think that IDG should be in at least three pieces, even if IDG people truly believe this will be a mistake” because of the synergies among the divisions and properties.

Reorg to more centralization

According to the company, IDG Communications owns about 180 publications and properties, produced in 24 languages in 97 countries. comScore ranked it as the top technology publisher worldwide in February 2016 -- counted by desktop uniques. (See the chart below for a list of the top fourteen.) This includes PC World that has a worldwide consumer audience of 37 million and Computerworld reaches 12 million IT manager reader/users.

Freidenberg says that IDG's structure and infrastructure changes over the last 18 months are important and have already been effective in increasing profit; while declining to mention the base of comparison, he says that IDG Communications’ EBITDA grew 166% in 2015 compared to 2014.