Cableco Liberty Global Inc (LGI) continues to be open for acquisitions in Western Europe.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley TMT conference in Barcelona, LGI co-CFO Charles Bracken said that LGI remained interested in consolidating its European cable…
Cableco Liberty Global Inc (LGI) continues to be open for acquisitions in Western Europe.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley TMT conference in Barcelona, LGI co-CFO Charles Bracken said that LGI remained interested in consolidating its European cable footprint, although also noted that “there is nothing we need to buy today to make sense of our footprint [and] there is nothing we need to sell today because we have a liquidity issues”.
“We certainly like the markets we’re in – we like Germany, we like Holland – and if the right price and regulation was permitting we might well look at opportunities in those markets,” said Bracken.
Liberty plans to continue to focus on Western Europe as it has sufficiently wealthy consumers to justify the investment it is making in its network infrastructure. Bracken added that Western Europe would be the core of its business over the next three to four years at least.
“Anything we can do to strengthen [our Western European business] we’ll continue to do,” he said.
VTR disposal possible
During the Q&A Bracken was also asked about a possible sale of VTR, the Chilean cableco LGI owns a 80% stake in. As LGI’s only asset in South America it represents something of an anomaly in its portfolio.
“It’s a great asset, we’re very happy to own it, it’s creating lots of value today,” said Bracken.
“But I think longer term it may fit better with somebody else, but we’re in no rush and there’s no immediate plans”.
Could repay debt
Speaking about Liberty’s balance sheet Bracken noted that the company was at the top end of its leverage target of 4x to 5x EBITDA and would “definitely not go any higher”. However, some debt repayments could be made: Liberty was currently planning to put “a lot of cash and liquidity” into play to fund the acquisition of Telenet, which could cost up to €1.98bn.
If not all shareholders accepted the €35 per share offer, cash could be used to pay some of the more expensive maturities down, he said.
Earlier in the Q&A Brackes had reiterated his company believes its €35 per share offer for Telenet was “full and fair”.
