AlphaTON Capital offered to buy a 51 percent controlling interest in Forbes Media Holdings, the parent of Forbes, in a statement on Monday.
The statement did not disclose a price but said it would fund the deal through U.S. dollars or stablecoin. AlphaTON announced its recent plans to acquire Blockchain Wire.
A Forbes spokesman said, “We haven’t been contacted and received a formal offer from this company.”
While Forbes has fielded offers and potential deals in the past, a person from inside the media organization said it had never heard of AlphaTON Capital.
AlphaTON Capital calls itself a “specialized digital asset treasury company focused on building and managing a strategic reserve of TON tokens and developing the Telegram ecosystem.”
According to GuruFocus.com, “The company currently reports no revenue growth, with earnings per share (EPS) at a concerning -64.67. This negative profitability is further highlighted by a return on equity (ROE) of -3446.62% and a return on assets (ROA) of -1499.48%, indicating significant operational challenges.”
In 2023, a consortium proposed buying Forbes for $800 million. Last year, Koch’s private equity arm explored a deal to buy the company.
Forbes hired investment bank Citibank to explore a deal in 2022 after a plan to go public fell through.
AlphaTon outlined plans to encrypt Forbes’ current and historical content on the TON blockchain. It also said that it could buy the remaining 49 percent of the company.
