Nielsen Holdings PLC has turned down a bid by a private-equity consortium to purchase the media-measurement big, noting that the corporate feels the proposal “doesn’t adequately compensate shareholders for Nielsen’s progress prospects.”
Shares within the firm, which has been underneath scrutiny for months as TV networks that characterize a few of its largest purchasers have sought new measurement work from rivals, soared greater than 40% on Monday on a report {that a} group that included Nielsen investor Elliott Administration Corp. sought to purchase the corporate for what may very well be round $15 billion, together with debt.
Nielsen stated its selection was bolstered by conversations with one in every of its largest shareholders, The WindAcre Partnership, an investor since 2013. WindAcre declined to affix the private-equity consortium and stated it will transfer to dam an acquisition if Nielsen selected to simply accept the bid. WindAcre, which has additionally been a big investor in Amazon and Google, “views Nielsen’s intrinsic worth to be considerably larger than values proposed by the consortium,” Nielsen stated in an announcement. WindAcre “has financial publicity” to round 14.4% of Nielsen’s shares, along with a 9.6% stake within the firm.
“We proceed to have robust confidence within the administration staff and Nielsen’s technique to create long-term worth for shareholders,” stated James A. Attwood, chair of Nielsen’s board of administrators, in an announcement. “We’re at all times open to exploring any avenue to create worth for shareholders, however the Board is in settlement with WindAcre, one in every of our largest shareholders, that the Consortium’s proposal considerably undervalues the Firm. Additional reflecting our confidence within the Firm, we plan to start share repurchases, which we anticipate to be an vital factor of our ongoing balanced capital allocation technique.”
Even so, Nielsen has been underneath a microscope for months. TV networks and their house owners have grown disenchanted with Nielsen’s potential to rely viewers who could watch their favourite packages through digital means, on cellular screens on by means of streaming video. Nielsen has misplaced trade accreditation for its nationwide TV scores service, and is engaged on a brand new measurement methodology that will tabulate unduplicated cross-stream viewership, however it won’t be rolled out in full for a number of months. In the meantime, most of the media corporations, together with NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and others have struck pacts with new measurement distributors to create so-called “alternate currencies” in time for the trade’s subsequent “upfront” ad-sales market.
Nielsen has confidence its present efforts to win again accreditation are on monitor, together with a retooling of its audience-measurement know-how it believes will come on-line this 12 months. Nielsen has already struck a testing alliance with entities corresponding to Walt Disney Co. and Interpublic Group, and has begun to make accessible new knowledge analyzing unduplicated audiences who watch their favourite programming throughout linear and digital venues. The problem to that effort comes from the networks who’ve begun to create their very own audience-measurement efforts utilizing rivals corresponding to iSpot, ComScore and VideoAmp, in hopes that advertisers will begin transferring some portion of their media buys to be graded by their alternate options.
