GoCompare strikes the right chord with bid for MyVoucherCodes

Shares in GoCompare.com Group hit a high note as the price comparison site said it was buying MyVoucherCodes — one of the UK’s biggest discount code websites — for £36.5 million cash.

GoCompare shares climbed 4% to 103p, as the site, famous for its ads featuring a fictional Italian tenor, said that the bigger group would be able to achieve 100 million site visits a year from “savvy savers”.

Matthew Crummack, chief executive of GoCompare.com, said the deal would “help even more people, more often”.

Annually, MyVoucherCodes has 45 million site visits and profits of £4 million. It has relationships with over 3000 retail brands and has been owned by digital payments group Monitise since 2014, when it bought it from its founder Mark Pearson in a deal worth £55 million.

Monitise has been looking to sell the business for over a year and the deal with GoCompare represents almost nine times forecast earnings for this year.

Analysts at Peel Hunt said GoCompare’s acquisition was “highly complementary”. The business was spun out of insurer esure last year and was itself the target of a takeover in recent weeks, with Zoopla Property Group having made a 110p offer for the group. Zoopla withdrew its offer for GoCompare last month.