Tamedia wants to buy Publigroupe

The Publigroupe Board of Directors is therefore advising shareholders to remain calm for the time being: Publigroupe will examine the offer of CHF 150 per Publigroupe share at the appropriate time and then issue a statement. There is no need for action due to the pre-announced public purchase offer, which Tamedia announced on Thursday evening. Tamedia is primarily targeting the Local.ch platform in its takeover plans. It is less interested in Publigroupe's other holdings. A continuation or sale will be examined. Thanks to Local.ch, Tamedia could expand its position in the Swiss directory market. It already owns 75 percent of its competitor search.ch, which it claims is the leading directory and information platform in the user market. Both platforms together could reach 4.8 million users, writes Tamedia.

Already a shareholder today

Tamedia is willing to pay for the expansion in the online market: The transaction is worth a total of around CHF 350 million. However, Tamedia itself already holds a 7.22 percent stake in Publigroupe. According to Tamedia, the offer price corresponds to a premium of 22 percent over the volume-weighted average price of the Publigroupe share over the last 60 trading days prior to the date of the pre-announcement. Publigroupe operates the envisaged Local.ch platform together with Swisscom. Tamedia would be interested in a constructive cooperation with Swisscom, said Tamedia spokesman Christoph Zimmer when asked by the news agency SDA. Search.ch and Local.ch would continue to operate as independent brands.

However, Tamedia did not make the planned offer for Publigroupe in consultation with either Publigroupe management or Swisscom, Zimmer continued. The Board of Directors of Publigroupe also speaks of an unsolicited public purchase offer. Tamedia does not expect the Competition Commission (Weko) to impose any conditions. This would only become active after the takeover has been completed. It is therefore still too early to make any anticipations, Weko spokesman Patrik Ducrey told SDA.

Good news

Publigroupe is currently undergoing major changes: at the beginning of April, Publigroupe announced that it would be concentrating on the electronic market and therefore divesting its struggling core business, newspaper advertising. The subsidiary Publicitas is therefore being sold to the German investment company Aurelius (Werbewoche.ch reported). At the beginning of April, Publisher President Hanspeter Lebrument criticized Publigroupe's management for letting things get this far. Publigroupe had recorded a net loss of CHF 5.9 million in 2013. On Thursday evening, Lebrument told SDA that Tamedia now wants to buy Publigroupe, or what remains of it, for the time being as "pleasing".

Tamedia ready for talks

When asked about the minority stake of 20 percent that Publigroupe holds in Südostschweiz Presse und Print AG, Lebrument, as publisher of Südostschweiz, said: "If Tamedia becomes the new owner, we will make some internal considerations." Tamedia does not consider the minority shareholdings to be strategic investments and is not seeking to exert any influence on the companies. It is prepared to hold talks with the majority owners and, if the valuation is appropriate, to sell.

In addition to its minority stake in Südostschweiz Presse und Print, Publigroupe also holds shares in Zanox.de (47.5 percent), SNP Société Neuchâteloise de Presse (29 percent) and FPH Freie Presse Holding (25 percent). FPH, publisher of the Neue Luzerner Zeitung and the St.Galler Tagblatt, is 75 percent owned by the NZZ Group. It is also too early for the NZZ Group to comment, as spokeswoman Bettina Schibli told SDA.