Weather Company Sold to Francisco Partners

The Weather Company has found new ownership in private equity.

IBM, which has owned the digital products of The Weather Channel and brands like Weather Underground since 2016, has sold the assets to investment firm Francisco Partners, the companies said Tuesday. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed. The deal is expected to close early next year.

The sale marks the end of a seven-year run for The Weather Company at the technology giant, which originally bought the assets as part of a plan to bulk up its data offering and build out its Watson Internet of Things Unit. Now, however, it doesn’t view the asset as part of its core offering. “Over the last few years, we’ve evolved IBM to be a hybrid cloud and AI company,” stated Rob Thomas, svp software and chief commercial officer at IBM, in announcing the sale.

Related Stories

Prior to IBM, The Weather Company had been owned by a consortium of private equity firms, The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, along with Comcast’s NBCUniversal. That group of companies acquired the Weather brands in 2008 from Landmark Communications in a deal with a reported price tag of $3.5 billion.

The digital assets — including the Weather Channel app and the flagship Weather dot com site, that were acquired by Francisco Partners — are separate from the TV brand. That linear TV network, The Weather Channel, was sold by Blackstone, Bain and NBCUniversal to media mogul Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios in 2018 for around $300 million. (Upon sale, the TV brand did license data from IBM’s Weather assets under what was described as a long-term contract. Allen now houses the channel as part of his Weather Group assets, which also includes local news app LocalNow, climate platform Pattrn and The Weather Channel en Español.)

With The Weather Company’s digital assets, Francisco Partners appears like it wants to grow the content footprint of the brand with advertising in mind. The flagship Weather dot com website is among the most visited properties in the U.S., ranks at the top of the science and education category and totaled more than 1.3 billion visits (different from visitors) in July, per software firm Similar Web. “Through increased investment and resources from Francisco Partners, The Weather Company will look to move beyond forecasting alone and bring new tools and experiences to users to help them understand how weather impacts all aspects of their lives, starting with health and well-being,” the deal release noted.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qbvLpbCwp5%2BZv6a8zqurnqpemLyue8GuqqKmlajAcK7UrKCnnaOoeq%2Bx1qxmraCVYsSmrdOhnKtlk6S6sa3NsmSsp5yZeqe%2BwKeaoquTpHqxrdGtpZ6qo2J%2Bc3%2BUbm5qcGhpfA%3D%3D