Media giant News Corporation has sold all of its 43.6% in New Zealand’s largest pay-TV provider Sky Network Television.
In a block trade, Deutsche Bank, the sole underwriter and joint bookrunner with Craigs Investment Partners, sold 169.9 million…
Media giant News Corporation has sold all of its 43.6% in New Zealand’s largest pay-TV provider Sky Network Television.
In a block trade, Deutsche Bank, the sole underwriter and joint bookrunner with Craigs Investment Partners, sold 169.9 million shares at NZ$4.80 per share in an accelerated bookbuild to raise NZ$815.5m (US$672.3m). The offer price was a 7.2% discount to the closing price the day prior to the sale.
Deutsche Bank, which owns 49.9% of New Zealand based Craigs, said that the transaction was the country’s biggest block trade in a decade.
Commenting on the offering, Chase Carey, president and COO of News Corp, said: “Sky is a world class subscription television business and has been an outstanding investment for News Corporation. We and Sky have always enjoyed an excellent, arms-length working relationship and we expect this to continue unaffected by the sale. In particular, we do not anticipate any change to current arrangements regarding access to content and collaboration on technology.”
Rumours that News Corp might be looking to sell its holding first emerged late last year with local reports claiming that private equity funds were eyeing a potential leveraged buyout of the DTH provider.
The speculation of News Corp’s likely exit increased further in November 2012 after Sky NZ’s second biggest shareholder, private local investment firm Todd Communications, sold its 11% stake for NZ$218m.
Sky NZ has over 800,000 residential subscribers, equivalent to about half of households in New Zealand. The company recently reported a 9% rise in net profit to NZ$68.2m (US$57m) for the six months to 31 December 2012. Total operating revenues increased by 3.9% to NZ$443.3m (US$365.5m).
