- BuzzFeed is a digital publisher that used to attract a lot of attention from people who thought it was the future of media.
- Now, it attracts people who think it is mismanaged and want to change the way CEO Jonah Peretti runs the company.
- But it remains unclear how BuzzFeed investors can influence Peretti’s ownership.
Back in 2021, BuzzFeed was worth around $1 billion. Now it’s worth $100 million.
Varun Gupta thinks it should be worth more. Gupta, who runs a small hedge fund, says he’s acquired a stake in the digital publisher and has ideas for how to increase its value.
The good news for Gupta, who tells me he’s bought somewhere between 1% and 5% of BuzzFeed’s shares, is that BuzzFeed CEO and founder Jonah Peretti also thinks the company should be worth more.
The bad news is Peretti seems uninterested in Gupta’s suggestions: Gupta says a note he sent Peretti’s company on July 9 has not generated a response.
That’s not totally surprising, given that Gupta’s primary critique of BuzzFeed seems to be BuzzFeed’s capital structure, which gives Peretti voting control of the company even though he doesn’t own a majority of its shares. As we’ve noted here before, that kind of dual-class stock structure isn’t unique among media and tech companies, and is meant to insulate BuzzFeed from demands from people like Gupta.
But since I’m a journalist, I’m duty-bound to report that there are now three investors who say they’ve bought stock in BuzzFeed and want it to change. So it’s a trend!
There’s Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate who has told the Securities and Exchange Commission he owns 8.9% of BuzzFeed; there’s Bill Pulte, who describes himself as a “Twitter philanthropist,” has told me he has purchased less than 1% of BuzzFeed, and says he supports Ramaswamy’s BuzzFeed plans; and Gupta, who runs the Edge One Capital fund from North Carolina.
Gupta says he’s working independently of Ramaswamy and that he was interested in BuzzFeed prior to Ramaswamy’s May 22 announcement when he first disclosed his BuzzFeed stake. He says he’s somewhat aligned with Ramaswamy’s critique that BuzzFeed caters too much to the left, but is more concerned about Peretti’s voting power and BuzzFeed’s balance sheet.
He does, however, want BuzzFeed to start running coverage of “bipartisan politics, entrepreneurship, crypto, stocks, and AI,” he writes in his July letter. “These are topics with high follower interest, and by increasing content in these areas, BuzzFeed can greatly expand and enhance platform usage.”
I don’t think there’s much more to say about that, for the time being. BuzzFeed’s fundamental situation remains unchanged since Ramaswamy disclosed his ownership: The company has a beaten-up share price, a lot of debt, and a setup that means the equity shares Ramaswamy, Pulte and Gupta own don’t get them a seat at the table.
