Publigroupe-VR recommends sale to Swisscom

However, it recommends rejecting Tamedia's offer of CHF 190 per share. In addition, Publigroupe will publish the interim financial statements as at March 31, 2014 required in connection with the current purchase offers on Monday.

In its report, Publigroupe's Board of Directors justifies its recommendation in favor of the Swisscom offer at the offered price of CHF 214 per share. The price offered by Swisscom is within the range that the independent fairness opinion considers appropriate from a financial point of view. Furthermore, in the opinion of the Board of Directors, strategic considerations also speak in favor of Swisscom as the new owner of PubliGroupe, in particular the expected strengthening of the market position of the directory platforms local.ch and search.ch through their planned merger. In addition, the Board of Directors of PubliGroupe is of the opinion that there could be promising opportunities for further development of the Digital & Marketing Services business segment together with Swisscom.

In a ruling dated June 11, 2014, the Swiss Takeover Board required Publigroupe to prepare (extraordinary) interim financial statements as at March 31, 2014 in connection with the purchase offers from Swisscom and Tamedia. With increased consolidated net sales of CHF 57.7 million (2013: CHF 55.6 million) and due to operational improvements in the Media Sales/Publicitas business division, the operating loss was significantly reduced to CHF -3 million (2013: CHF -9 million). As previously reported, the sale of Publicitas for Publigroupe, which was completed at the end of June 2014, will lead to a one-off write-down of around CHF 30 - 40 million, which will have a negative impact on the 2014 net result. Publigroupe expects a positive operating result for the first half of 2014.