Swedish cableco Com Hem’s owner has reportedly hired advisers for an IPO that would value it at more than SKr 20bn (US$3.1bn) before the summer holidays.
Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan are coordinators while Rothschild is also acting as an IPO adviser,…
Swedish cableco Com Hem’s owner has reportedly hired advisers for an IPO that would value it at more than SKr 20bn (US$3.1bn) before the summer holidays.
Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan are coordinators while Rothschild is also acting as an IPO adviser, reported Reuters citing three sources.
All parties, including Com Hem’s private equity owner BC Partners, declined to comment.
Com Hem had been rumoured to be waiting to appoint a new CEO before making a decision on whether to move ahead with a listing. The group announced the appointment of Millicom executive vice president Anders Nilsson to take the helm late last month.
Its move to tap the equity markets is not unexpected given a spate of renewed interested in IPOs across the telecoms sector, which recently saw multinational telco Altice, which owns Com Hem’s French peer Numericable, listing shares.
One banker recently told TelecomFinance that an IPO for Com Hem would make sense as it is unlikely to benefit from strategic interest.
“Sweden is not Spain,” the person said, referring to a country with significantly more people and where local cableco Ono attracts strategic interest from British mobile giant Vodafone.
“So if you can get 10x multiple in the public markets then why not get yourself publicly listed and get a decent valuation?”
Andrew Barron, Com Hem’s executive chairman, refused to be drawn on the IPO in an interview with TelecomFinance earlier this week.
“BC Partners has been invested in Com Hem for more than two years and it won’t own the company forever,” said Barron.
“But under BC ownership, significant additional investment has gone into the network, [OTT service] TiVo and B2B for example. As a result Com Hem has good growth opportunities and BC Partners will be in a strong position when they consider their options.”
