a split project to accelerate developments

2023-12-14 16:49:00

With the acquisition of the Lagardère group, Vivendi has reached a milestone. Its turnover jumped, with this operation, by 72% to 16.5 billion euros. Its number of employees has almost doubled, to 66,000 employees. The group, whose market capitalization has passed the 10 billion euro mark, must therefore make its grand return to the CAC on December 18. But the media giant controlled by Vincent Bolloré still wants to grow. And today, he considers his conglomerate situation a handicap for his ambitions.

This is why it announced, Wednesday at the close of the markets, that it was considering dividing its activities into several distinct activities, in order to list each, and separately, on the Stock Exchange. “Vivendi is suffering a very high conglomerate discount, significantly reducing its valuation and thus limiting its ability to carry out external growth operations for its subsidiaries”, affirms the group in a press release. According to Oddo BHF analysts, its “holding discount” would be 48% today.

“Exploit other consolidation opportunities”

The objective is to clearly separate its most important assets. Among them, there is obviously Canal+. The pay TV group has made several purchases in recent years. “After acquiring M7, then SPI, the company took strategic stakes in companies such as Multichoice, VIU and Viaplay, thus demonstrating its ability to identify and seize promising opportunities across all its geographies”, underlines Vivendi. Its staff believes that Canal+ is now in « position favorable » pour “exploit other consolidation opportunities on an international scale”.

Idem for the communications giant Havas. “The group has carried out a sustained pace of targeted acquisitions over the last two years, thus strengthening its field of expertise and its geographical coverage, and launched numerous innovative solutions”, says Vivendi. This “beautiful dynamic”he greets, “opens the way to accelerate its development”.

Investors applaud

A third, more heterogeneous pole would emerge. This “investment company”as Vivendi has so far called it, would hold “listed and unlisted financial participations in the culture, media and entertainment sectors”. It would own, in particular, Vivendi’s 60% in Lagardère, and its activities in publishing (with the gem Hachette), “travel retail” (shops in train stations and airports) and the media (Le JDD, Europe 1 and Paris Match).

In the end, this split “would give all activities the human resources and financial agility necessary for their development”, argues Vivendi. The group does not specify when it will make its decision. “An update on the progress of the study of this split project and its feasibility will be provided in due time”, he says. Investors applaud. At the end of the followingnoon, Vivendi’s stock price increased by 10.20%, to 9.87 euros. If this split comes to an end, “current shareholders would then find themselves shareholders of three better valued entities”explain Oddo BHF analysts.

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