Acquisition

Centaur Holdings PLC
04 May 2006


            


            Centaur Holdings plc (Centaur) acquires on-line business


Centaur, the specialist business publishing and information company, is pleased
to announce that it has acquired the entire share capital of the online sales
lead service company Pro-Talk Ltd for an initial consideration of £4 million in
cash. Further payment of consideration may be made, subject to earnings in the
twelve month periods ending 30th September 2006 and 30th September 2007. The
final consideration payable under the earn-out is based on a multiple of six
times operating profit and is capped at £14m.

Pro-Talk Ltd has developed and currently operates 13 web sites serving specific
vertical business sectors, mainly in the engineering, construction and technical
products areas. It also publishes regular email newsletters for readers in these
sectors. It currently has circa 170,000 registered readers of these newsletters
and receives in excess of 1.5 million unique visitors to its sites each month.
Pro-Talk's principal objective is to provide sales leads to companies from
prospective customers. Its profit before tax for the 12 months to 30th September
2005, the date of the last published accounts, was £0.15m. The acquisition is
expected to be earnings enhancing in the current financial year. The company
currently employs 30 staff and is based in offices in Hertfordshire, from where
it will continue to operate.

Graham Sherren, Chairman and Chief Executive of Centaur, said: 'Search Engine
Marketing (see note 3) is by some margin the largest category of online
advertising expenditure in the UK and continues to grow rapidly. Pro-Talk is
taking advantage of this trend and has developed a successful online sales lead
generation business that is demonstrating strong growth in its specialist
sectors. We believe that we can leverage Pro-Talk's technology and Centaur's
brands and apply this model both to extend Pro-Talk's success in its existing
market sectors and to establish a number of additional services in sectors that
are important to Centaur. This acquisition is central to Centaur's strategy as
we extend the range of online services we offer to our specialist business
communities. I am pleased that the founders of Pro-Talk, Chris Rand and Andrew
Pye, will remain with the business. We look forward to working with them to
deliver further growth.'

Chris Rand of Pro-Talk said 'We are delighted to be joining Centaur and to have
the opportunity to enhance Pro-Talk's potential by working in partnership with
Centaur's market-leading brands.'


Enquiries:
Centaur Holdings plc           Graham Sherren          Tel: [phone]
                               Geoff Wilmot

Pro-Talk Ltd                   Chris Rand              Tel: [phone]

Gavin Anderson & Company       Richard Constant        Tel: [phone]
                               Robert Speed
                               Janine Brewis

Notes for editors

1. Centaur's product portfolio currently comprises 9 weekly magazines, 2
fortnightly magazines, 11 monthly magazines, 4 magazines of a quarterly or
bi-monthly frequency, 2 monthly newsletters, 27 annual printed products, 19
online products or services, 25 awards or other sponsored events, 25 exhibitions
and 90 conferences.


2. Centaur reports its results within 5 distinct business sector segments,
namely Legal and Financial, Marketing and Creative, Engineering and
Construction, Perfect Information and Other. The first 3 segments comprise
principally the following vertical business communities in which Centaur
publishes market-leading magazine titles: Retail Financial Products, Legal
Services, Marketing Services, Creative Services, New Media, Engineering, Private
Homebuilding. Centaur also enjoys strong positions in a number of other
specialist communities, namely HR, Visual Arts Production, Construction, Antique
Rugs and Textiles, Logistics, Recruitment and Public/Private Finance. In
addition, it serves the Business Travel community with 3 leading trade shows in
the UK and overseas


3. Search Engine Marketing is a term used to describe the marketing
investment made by suppliers wishing to attract prospective customers who are
actively looking for information using one or more of the available internet
search engines.



                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange