Acast Pays $20M for Backyard // 10x EBITDA for a Podcast x Creator Sales team

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Hi readers,

Acast just bought Backyard Ventures for $20M. Because Acast is publicly listed in Stockholm, we get actual numbers.

$16M of cash at close and $4M paid later in Acast stock. Backyard did $16.1M of revenue in 2025 at a 12% adjusted EBITDA margin, so call it $1.9M of EBITDA and a 10.4x valuation multiple. 

What Acast gets in the sale → Roughly 18 people in Austin who know American brand marketers, and the sales rights to a 200-creator roster. 

It’s the second time in eight weeks a European buyer has crossed the Atlantic for a creator x podcast agency. I was also able to talk to the founder, Matt Cisneros, to get some additional context on the deal. 

Below: I discuss three multiple methodologies on this deal and which one best reflects a true valuation benchmark, why the $4M of deferred stock carries less risk than a normal earnout, and why the accretion argument falls apart when you look deeper at Acast’s own P&L.

Also: we’re hiring an M&A Coordinator.

 

–SELLER: Backyard Ventures–

Overview

• Outsourced ad sales and brand partnerships firm for premium podcast and social creators
• Sells podcast, YouTube, newsletter, and social ad inventory on the creators’ behalf
• Founded May 2019 by Matt Cisneros
• ~20 full-time staff, based in Austin, TX
• Bootstrapped, no disclosed outside capital

Company Highlights

• Roster incl The Daily Stoic (Ryan Holiday), Piers Morgan Uncensored, Deep Questions (Cal Newport), Solved (Mark Manson), A Little Bit Culty
• $16.1M 2025 revenue at a 12% adjusted EBITDA margin (~$1.9M EBITDA)
• 65% revenue CAGR since 2023
• 200+ creators under representation
• 35.5M newsletter subscribers
• 230M monthly YouTube views
• 46M monthly simulcast views

Founding Story

• Before Backyard, Cisneros helped build and sell a digital/social media company, Grandex, running revenue and ad sales
• Saw podcasting emerging in 2013–14 as a faster path to revenue than big custom media plans (deals got done quickly, with less approval layers)
• Cisneros then started Backyard in Austin in May 2019
• Started content-agnostic on purpose; wanted to be flexible in building impactful campaigns for clients
• For creator, goal was to be a one-stop shop so clients don’t need multiple, fragmented partners; first client was the Ross Bolen podcast
• Added other media channels as clients asked (social → YouTube → newsletters), proving each before hiring to scale it
• Grew to 150+ creators by mid-2024 and 200+ by 2026, entirely on commission economics

Business Model & Services

• Podcast ad sales… Host-read and programmatic inventory for the 200-creator roster. Fees are commission-based, at an industry-standard rate, and no retainers. Roster is mostly exclusive representation.
• YouTube brand integrations… Sponsored segments and integrations across 230M monthly views. Same commission basis.
• Newsletter sponsorships… Placements across a 35.5M-subscriber base. Commission basis, rate not separately disclosed.
• Multi-component packages… Bundled audio / video / newsletter / social buys sold as one campaign. Commission basis, and a reason why average deal size grew faster than the roster did.

Owners & Selling Shareholders

• Cisneros is founder and controlling shareholder, with no disclosed institutional investors

Financials

	FY23	FY24	FY25 (actuals)
Revenue	~$5.9M (est)	~$9.8M (est)	$16.1M
Growth	n/a	~65% (est)	~65% (est)
Adj EBITDA margin	n/d	n/d	12%
Adj EBITDA	n/d	n/d	~$1.9M

• Only FY25 is disclosed, so I back-solved FY23 and FY24 off the CAGR
• Means those two years are a smooth curve, not the real trajectory. Real growth is lumpy, and a rep firm that signs one Ryan Holiday can jump 100% in a year and 30% the next
• 2026 isn’t disclosed, but Cisneros guidance is that growth remains strong

Select Capital Markets History

• May 2019: Founded in Austin by Matt Cisneros, bootstrapped
• 2019 to 2026: No disclosed outside capital raised
• Aug 2026: Acquired by Acast AB for $20M EV

 

–BUYER: Acast AB (publ) (STO: ACAST)–

Overview

• Podcast hosting, distribution, and advertising marketplace
• HQ in Stockholm, with teams across ~15 countries including London and New York
• Founded 2014 in Stockholm by Måns Ulvestam, Karl Rosander, and Johan Billgren
• CEO is Greg Glenday, New York-based, appointed 2023
• Listed on Nasdaq First North (Stockholm) since 2021
• ~500 employees worldwide

Company Highlights

• Marquee shows and recent signings incl The Washington Post, Seth Meyers, The Lonely Island, and The Comment Section with Drew Afualo
• Revenue per listen/view up 26% YoY in Q2’26 (to SEK 0.69); the network is monetizing better, not just growing
• 180+ shows and 1,000+ episodes now running video ads, a new inventory channel
• Total listens and views up only 2% YoY, so growth is coming from yield
• 140,000+ podcasts hosted across the network
• (Financials highlights detailed below)

Founding Story

• Founded 2014 in Stockholm by Måns Ulvestam, Karl Rosander, and Johan Billgren, three Swedish media entrepreneurs
• The catalyst: podcast monetization was still stuck in a radio-style, baked-in-ad model, so they built one of the first dynamic ad-insertion platforms, letting ads be targeted by listener, location, and time and swapped in after the fact
• IPO’d on Nasdaq First North in June 2021 near the top of the podcast capital cycle
• Spent 2022 to 2024 cutting toward profitability after the correction

Business Model & Services

• Hosting and distribution… Podcast hosting for independent creators and networks. Tiered SaaS subscription plus revenue share.
• Ad marketplace… Programmatic and host-read demand matched to shows. Acast books gross and pays creators out of cost of sales, which is why gross margin sits at 37%.
• Acast+ subscriptions… Listener-paid premium and ad-free tiers. Platform take on subscriber revenue.
• Revenue mix: ~96% advertising, ~4% hosting/subscriptions 
• North America revenue is 38% of revenue and the fastest growing portion (+34% YoY for Q2’26)

Financials & Valuation

Stock (STO: ACAST):

• Share price: SEK 37.45 as of Aug 15, 2026 (~$3.95 USD)
• Market cap: SEK 6.66B ($700M USD) 
• Up ~128% YoY

Valuation:

• Enterprise Value:~$638M 
• LTM Revenue: ~$313M 
• LTM adj EBITDA: ~$22M
• 2.0x EV / Revenue (from 3.7x in 2023)
• 28.9x EV / EBITDA

Most recent qtr: Q2’26

• SEK 775.6M net sales, +29% organic
• 7% adj EBITDA margin

Balance Sheet

• Cash & short-term investments: ~SEK 602M (~$63M) [verified, Q1’26 balance sheet]
• Total debt: ~SEK 129M (~$14M)
• Net cash position: ~SEK 472M (~$50M)
• Backyard deal funded entirely from existing cash, no external financing

Select Capital Markets History

• 2014: Founded in Stockholm
• Pre-IPO: $67M+ raised across 3 funding rounds between 2015-2019 (est), incl around $30M of venture debt
• Jun 2021: IPO on Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market, raising SEK 1.83B($210M) at a SEK 7B ($820M) valuation
• Aug 2026: Acquires Backyard Ventures for $20M

 

–DEAL DETAILS–

Overview

• Announced Aug 11, 2026
• $20M enterprise value, cash-free and debt-free
• $16M cash at close (80%)
• $4M in Acast stock (20%), paid in yrs 2 and 3

Valuation Math

• 2025 revenue: $16.1M
• 2025 adj EBITDA: ~$1.9M
• Enterprise value: $20M
• EV / revenue: $20M ÷ $16.1M = 1.2x
• EV / EBITDA: $20M ÷ $1.9M = 10.4x

Deal Structure

• The $4M stock portion is 1,005,671 Acast shares, paid out in two equal installments (half at the second anniversary of deal close, half at the third)
• Downward value protection on those shares: if Acast’s stock falls before the payout dates, the share count adjusts up so the $4M holds its value
• Maximum dilution of ~0.6% of Acast shares outstanding at close
• Retention arrangement agreed with Cisneros, who continues as CEO
• Backyard brand will be retired, with the roster and team moving under Acast

Strategic Rationale — Buyer (Acast):

• Buys a US commercial team and the American brand relationships that come with it
• Adds 200+ premium creators to increase and diversify Acast media sales inventory for brand marketers
• Adds a multi-platform selling capability (YouTube, newsletter, social) via Backyard team 
• Acquires a 12% margin business while running a 7% margin itself, so the target is margin-additive on day one
• Glenday: “the technology, demand, and global scale to run omnichannel campaigns for creators”

Strategic Rationale — Seller (Backyard):

• Needed tech and hosting that Cisneros didn’t want to build himself; internal data tooling to prove creator-brand fit (tying together campaign data with sources like Magellan and SellerCrowd), and a hosting stack he’d been renting. Acast already had both
• Both sides had what the other lacked; Acast the tech, scale, and demand; Backyard the US creators, brand relationships, and multi-channel selling
• Sold into a growth curve rather than after it flattened, which is where sellers can generate a premium in an exit
• Cisneros: “creators deserve a partner who can serve their entire audience, not just one channel”

Post-Deal Operations

• Cisneros continues to lead the business, and the Backyard team stays in Austin
• Roster currently hosted on ART19 and Megaphone, so migration to Acast hosting is a likely integration step
• No announced headcount reduction

 

–WHAT ELSE I FIND INTERESTING–

Analysis of deal valuation metrics; 3 ways to look at multiples.

Acast said it paid ~10x trailing EBITDA. That’s one of three valuation multiples one can calc here:

• $20M total consideration / $1.9M FY25 adj EBITDA = 10.4x
• $20M / ~$2.2M estimated 2026 EBITDA = ~9.3x
• $16M cash at close / $1.9M FY25 adj EBITDA = 8.4x

The ~9.3x assumes 2026 growth roughly halves to ~25%, putting revenue near $18M at a steady 12% margin. Acast gave no 2026 stub financial data, so that middle number is my speculation and conservative against Cisneros’ guidance that growth is strong in 2026. Take it with a grain of salt.

More importantly is to look at the 8.4x versus the 10.4x. 

Only $16M actually left Acast’s balance sheet at close. The other $4M is paid over the following two to three years via stock. So the upfront cash multiple is 8.4x and the full enterprise value multiple is 10.4x – the right comp depends on how you treat that deferred stock. To that point…

 

The deferred stock is safer than the split makes it look

Buried in the Swedish filing is a “downward value protection mechanism in respect of the consideration shares.”

That means if Acast’s stock falls between now and the payout dates, Cisneros gets made whole aka the share count adjusts up. That means he doesn’t carry two to three years of equity risk on a small-cap Stockholm listing. 

There’s also no disclosure about any contingencies related to the $4M deferred stock payment i.e. no financial targets, no having to remain employed with company, etc. Therefore, I have high confidence that the total purchase price will end up being $20M, a ~10.4x multiple. 

The reason for my deep dive on the deferred structure is that it’s important to understand for anyone benchmarking valuations in the digital agency services space. Specifically, we often see sellers get handed structures where the deferred piece is genuinely at risk and the headline multiple is quoted as if it isn’t, which explains why we breakout valuation multiples between guaranteed consideration VS earnout for the deals we cover. 

 

Two European buyers, two US sales floors, eight weeks apart

In June, London’s Miroma Group bought Houston-based Ad Results Media (our analysis) in what AdWeek called a “big U.S. push.” In August, Stockholm’s Acast bought Austin-based Backyard Ventures.

That’s similar strategic logic in both deals. The European buyer already has listeners, tech, and European demand. What it doesn’t have is a US-based team with relationships at American brands. That would take 2 to 3 years to build, or you can buy it in year 1.

Backyard’s team is just as valuable as the 200+ roster they’re showing up with in the deal. The bigger win is Acast’s own demand engine plus 200 premium shows = someone on the team can get a meeting with a US media buyer.

Two deals is not a pattern, but it’s worth paying attention to. That being said, we spent a good chunk of London Podcast Show week hearing European operators talk about US expansion, and the capital is clearly pointed in this direction.

For process, Cisneros and his advisors ran a full M&A auction, kicking off at the end of 2025 with initial meetings scheduled around CES in January. Acast stood out in their initial meetings, with a deal team led by Valerie Reimer, the SVP of biz dev and strategic partnerships, who’d followed Backyard for years and vibed with Matt in early deal conversations. 

 

Same deal, opposite side of the table

I keep getting asked how to value agencies at the crossover of creators and podcasting. There are two kinds, and they price differently. Backyard is a media seller: it controls premium talent and IP inventory, reps the creators, and sells that inventory to brands. And the majority of its roster has exclusive rep contracts with Backyard. In contrast, Ad Results Media, Veritone One, and Oxford Road are media buyers: they rep the brand’s budget and buy inventory from talent like Backyard’s.

Same transaction shape, opposite side of the table. From a small subset of deal data, the media seller gets a premium VS the media buyer. 

• Backyard, sell-side, talent and IP: ~10.4x EBITDA
• Veritone One and Oxford Road, buy-side, brand budgets: 8.9x EBITDA, per Insignia’s 2024 deal and public filings (our deal analysis)
• Ad Results Media, buy-side: our estimate was 6 to 10x; pure speculation, no public data, and likely a meaningful amount was rollover equity (our deal analysis)

Backyard earned a multiple at the top end of the range. 

Of note, three comps is not a market-standard, and on cash at close Backyard’s 8.4x is closely aligned with Veritone One’s 8.9x, so the premium shows up on total consideration more than on upfront cash. But it fits what our team keeps seeing. In the modern creator economy, the money follows whoever controls premium talent and IP inventory and knows how to pair it with premium brand spend for multi-platform, long term campaigns.

Owning (or having rights to) the inventory is a key business differentiator and moat VS peers. Repping the budget is a service on top of it.

 

A note on Acast’s recent transition to profitability

For most of its life Acast lost money by design. Hosting and ad-marketplace is a pass-through business… roughly 63% of revenue flows back out to creators as cost of sales, so gross margin is around 37%. Through the 2021 podcast boom Acast spent hard on top of that thin margin, pursuing shows with rich creator deals, sales headcount, and international expansion to win share when capital was cheap.

The correction forced discipline. 

Starting a few years ago, Acast stopped buying volume, held the cost base roughly flat, and let revenue grow into it. North America led (Q4 net sales there were up 33%), the higher-margin ad marketplace carried more of the revenue mix, and revenue per listen kept rising even as total listens dipped due to Apple’s iOS changes. 

That operating leverage produced Acast’s first full-year positive operating profit and cash flow in 2025, and its first profitable Q1 in 2026. This is important to keep in mind considering the current 28.9x EBITDA valuation multiple we calc’d above.

 

The accretion math looks great, but that’s not the real deal driver

At first blush, this looks like a steal. Acast trades at 28.9x EV / EBITDA and just bought EBITDA at 10.4x. Apply Backyard’s $1.9M EBITDA at the parent multiple and you get ~$55M of value for $20M paid.

Though I don’t believe that’s the right way to look at this deal. 

Acast’s 28.9x isn’t a quality multiple, but instead the result of a company that only just crossed into profitability… $22M of EBITDA on $313M of revenue. As that denominator grows, the multiple will compress, and the arbitrage math fundamentally changes.

The real case is simpler. 

Acast gets better inventory to sell to brands it already serves, and a team that can sell media channels it couldn’t sell before. Every Acast advertiser is now a potential buyer of a Ryan Holiday integration, and every Backyard creator sits on a platform with European marketer demand behind it.

(Of note, Cisneros believes that it’s still very early days in media spend going to social / digital; the winners rep true creators with a flexible vision for how to work with brands, and more consolidation is coming). 

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