Moonpig sold to Photobox in £120m deal

The two businesses will continue to operate as separate brands but will exploit cross-selling opportunities.

Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins, who has a 35% stake in the company which he set up in 1999, will continue as an investor and board adviser at Photobox.

Jenkins said: “Every morning the equivalent of a Premier League football stadium full of people get a Moonpig card and they love them. We now want to build on that success. The explosion in digital photography over the past few years has been evident in the number of our customers using their own photographs to great and often hilarious effect in our cards.

“We can now offer a much wider range of photographic products to our customers while adding our own Moonpig creativity. We can also take our core greeting card product to countries which would be difficult to access as a standalone business.”

Moonpig’s turnover was £38m for its financial year ending April 2011. The UK greetings card market is estimated to be worth £1bn per annum.

Photobox prints more than 1m photos per day and reported sales of €80m (£72m) in 2010.

PhotoBox was advised by Lazard and Moonpig was advised by Ingenious Corporate Finance on the transaction.