One of Burlington’s largest businesses, Dealer.com, sold to a New York company for almost $1 billion in a deal announced Thursday.
Dealer.com, founded in 1998, is a leading online marketing company for automotive dealerships across the nation and employs about 700 people in Burlington. The company was purchased today by Dealer Track, a Now York-based dealership consulting company with an overlapping business model.
Dealer Track bought Dealer.com for $620 million cash in addition to 8.7 million shares of Dealer Track stock, worth about $300 million.
While the merger has a big impact on owners’ bank accounts, a Dealer Track spokesman said Dealer.com employees don’t have to worry about moving or job hunting any time soon.
“Dealer.com will by and large keep doing what they’re doing,” said Dealer Track spokesman Ken Engberg. “If anything, I would expect them to grow as our market opportunity unfolds in front of us.”
Dealer.com’s company culture has been touted by officials as an example of the kind of innovative, high-tech business Burlington hopes to attract. Burlington Mayor MiroWeinberger congratulated the company in a statement Thursday evening, calling the news "a high-profile demonstration that Burlington is a wonderful place to create and grow a successful tech business that should spur further local investment."
Engberg said the company's corporate culture will be largely untouched by the new ownership.
“That sort of progressive and up-to-date attitude of its team is really what makes [Dealer.com] attractive, so there’s no reason we would want to disrupt that in any way,” he said.
Dealer.com spokeswoman Alison von Puschendorf said more details will become clear as the merger is finalized in the next few months.
Update 12/19/2013 at 6:40 p.m. with Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger's statement.
