How much ebitda did they pay for mailchimp?

When Intuit acquired Mailchimp in late 2021 for roughly $12 billion, Mailchimp was generating an estimated $300 million in EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) on roughly $700 million in annual revenue.

This means Intuit paid a staggering ~40x EBITDA multiple for the company.

To put that in perspective, paying 40 times a company's core cash flow is a massive premium, even by the standards of the 2021 tech boom. Intuit justified the sky-high multiple by projecting that they could cross-sell Mailchimp's marketing tools to the millions of small businesses already using QuickBooks, theoretically driving massive revenue synergies.

However, since Mailchimp's growth has recently decelerated (as seen in the 21% revenue drop you mentioned earlier), that 40x multiple looks increasingly expensive in hindsight, which is why Wall Street is now punishing Intuit for the platform's underperformance.