Lagardere may spend more than a billion eur on acquisitions say analysts |
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Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:10
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LONDON (Thomson Financial) - French media, communications and aerospace group Lagardere could make acquisitions worth up to 2.8 bln eur, according to a broker note by UBS.The note said that, excluding Lagardere's convertible bond on the aerospace group EADS and assuming a target gearing of 3x net debt/2008 EBITDA, Lagardere could have 2.8 bln eur of acquisition headroom.Two other analysts agreed with UBS that Lagardere was likely to grow via acquisitions in the areas of books, sports and digital media.One analyst who preferred not to be named thought it unlikely that Lagardere would spend more than 1.5 bln eur on acquisitions, due to a lack of adequate acquisition targets.The unnamed analyst thought that Lagardere was most likely to make large acquisitions in sport and books, but did not expect expenditure for media acquisitions to exceed 100 mln eur.The UBS note had named sports and entertainment agency IMG as an attractive takeover target for Largardere, but conceded that IMG was not currently for sale.The note nevertheless valued IMG at 2 bln usd, representing 15x the estimated EBITDA for 2007.Two analysts agreed with UBS that Lagardere was still interested in the book publisher Simon & Schuster, which the note valued at about 800 mln eur, representing 1x sales and 10xEBITDA.Alexander.Wessendorff@thomson.comaw/lceCOPYRIGHTCopyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.
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