Nine to face the market as Domain bid looms
This week is crunch time for Nine, as it reports its first-half FY25 results while facing shareholder questions regarding permanent leadership and deals with a takeover bid for Domain.
When US listing giant Costar’s offer of $4.20 per share to take 100% ownership of Domain was made on Thursday night, it was an enticing one.
Costar was willing to pay 34.6% more than Domain’s market cap at the time, which saw the company valued at $1.9 billion – trading at $3.12 per share.
Great to pass Domain over to a US$34b MV “have a go” CoStar. In my research, of mature markets, only has already been beaten decade+ ago in France Lebencoin beating Seloger, and REA’s Casa It, beaten by Immobiliera also a decade ago. The onloy other place that it may occur was in NZ where NZME is at c54/46 UV’s ratio against Trade Me Property. Having realised with this sale c$1.7b NEC can concentrate on FTA, newspapers and Stan. Maybe buying an OOH operator to get the reach that FTA has lost (now c70% last time I checked in 2024), versus OOH media. runngng at close if not higher than 80% reach.
Unfortunately, with the woke crowd having forced out both Hugh Marks and Mike Sneesby -the two best FTA operators there were since David Leckie, the Australian media industry is unlikely to have a pool of operators as good as those two.
Note Bruce Gordon \, who now owns c25% of NEC , was not good for shareholders in his days operating Television Wollongong, which was, until privatisied by Bruce Gordon, an ASX listing with a very very poor return.