Polish media conglomerate ITI Group is considering selling its majority 56.21% stake in satellite television broadcaster TVN.
To help review its strategic options, ITI has hired JP Morgan and Nomura.
According to local reports, the stake could be…
Polish media conglomerate ITI Group is considering selling its majority 56.21% stake in satellite television broadcaster TVN.
To help review its strategic options, ITI has hired JP Morgan and Nomura.
According to local reports, the stake could be valued at as much as PLN6.8bn (US$2.5bn). As of 8 July 2011, Warsaw Stock Exchange-listed TVN had a market cap of PLN5.5bn (US$2bn).
Five buyers have reportedly been approached including Time Warner, Bertelsmann, which owns the RTL Group, and Fox Broadcasting Company. The latter is part of the Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, currently under fire amid the phone hacking scandal in the UK.
TVN owns ten TV channels as well as digital pay-TV platform ‘n’, which it acquired outright in April 2010 after it purchased the 49% stake that it did not already own. To fund the E188m total transaction price, TVN issued E148m in seven-year 10.75% high yield senior unsecured notes and E40m in corporate promissory notes to ITI Group, the then owner of ‘n’, and its subsidiaries.
TVN then sought to refinance this debt in November 2010 by issuing E175m of senior unsecured notes, due 2018. The banks arranging that transaction included JP Morgan and Nomura.
Poland is currently populated with five DTH platforms: Cyfra +, which is operated by French media group Canal +; Cyfrowy Polsat; TP, which is 50%-controlled by French incumbent France Telecom; Telewizja na Karte (TNK); and ‘n’.
A few weeks ago, Polish billionaire Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, along with associate Hieronim Ruta, said they were looking to cut their direct and indirect investments in Cyfrowy Polsat.
This came a few months after Cyfrowy Polsat said it would buy Telewizja (TV) Polsat, its parent company, for approximately PLN3.75bn (US$1.3bn) in a cash and share deal.
