I am putting this up for discussion and hope to improve my analytical thinking. Any comment is most welcome.

I had a lookup on the financial data of Jobstreet for 2013.

Pre-tax earnings - RM84.8m (78% is RM66.1m)

After-tax earnings - RM61.4m (78% is RM47.8m)

Free cash flow - RM46.3m (78% is RM36.1m)

Seek.com is paying RM1.7B for the remaining 78% of Jobstreet that they haven't own. So the multiples are:

Pre-tax earning - 25.7x

After-tax earnings - 27.6x

Free cash flow - 47x

Those are quite some rich valuation although make no mistake Jobstreet is an excellent business possessing a strong moat and run by well and able management. Their earnings growth, ROE and FCF have been outstanding for the past 5-10 years. Unless I miss out something (my understanding of the industry is same as anyone), it will take Seek.com quite some time to recoup this investment. 

But if consider, back in 2012, Japan giant Recruit Co. a recruitment/HR/Job classified company, acquired Indeed.com for an estimated $750m to $1b, since both are private companies so the exact price is unavailable. Sources mentioned that Indeed had a revenue of $150m and $25m in profit back then. That means Recruit Co. paid about 30-40x earnings to acquire Indeed.com. With that as a comparison, Seek/Jobstreet deal does look cheap.