German cableco Tele Columbus has begun the offer period for its initial public offering today and set the price range at between €8 (US$9.43) and €12 (US$14.15) per share.
Tele Columbus is offering 37.5 million new shares, 15.3 million of its…
German cableco Tele Columbus has begun the offer period for its initial public offering today and set the price range at between €8 (US$9.43) and €12 (US$14.15) per share.
Tele Columbus is offering 37.5 million new shares, 15.3 million of its existing shares held by a Luxembourg holdco, and an over-allotment option of a further 3.75 million new shares.
If the stock placed at mid-point of the price range and the greenshoe was taken up in full, the cable operator would raise €447m (US$527m).
Tele Columbus will use the proceeds from the flotation to improve its capital structure and reduce its financing liabilities. CEO Ronny Verhelst has been quoted as saying that the company is not running a sale process alongside the IPO.
“The IPO will give us additional financial flexibility to implement our successfully initiated growth strategy in the coming years,” Verhelst said in a statement.
“Over the medium term, we want to raise the number of products per customer from today’s 1.43 to 1.7, grow the monthly average revenue per customer from €14 to €17 and increase the share of upgraded households supplied with own signals from 54% to 70%.”
Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are managing the listing. BofA Merrill Lynch and Berenberg are also acting as bookrunners.
The offer period will run until 21 January and the first day of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is anticipated to be 23 January.
Tele Columbus provides cable television, broadband and telephony services to 1.7 million households, with a particular focus on Eastern Germany, although it also aims to expand in selected Western German regions.
The operator is owned by several hedge and credit funds and posted revenues of €159.3m in Q3 2014, and EBITDA of €72.9m.
Tele Columbus plans to continue investing to further migrate networks from third-party level 3 operators and expand its customer base, which includes large and small housing associations.
In 2013, its larger rival Kabel Deutschland made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Tele Columbus after meeting resistance from the German antitrust regulator. Tele Columbus is the third-largest cable operator in Germany behind KDG and Kabel BW.
