Photon Group wipes out debts by selling field marketing and retail division for $146.5m
Photon Group appears to have completed one of the corporate survival miracles of the decade and emerged from under its mountain of debt.
The company told the ASX this morning that it had sold its field marketing and retail sales division of $146.5m, leaving the company effectively clear of its debts.
The deal leaves Photon a much smaller company, but retaining the crown jewels of its agency portfolio including BMF, Naked Communications and BWM.
The slash-and-burn rescue by CEO Jeremy Philips has seen Photon go from a $450m debt-laden holding group of 45 disparate companies facing massive earnout commitments, to just 17 agencies but with $15m still in the bank. This will be used to cover its renegotiated earnout commitments over the next couple of years.
We’ll have to wait to see if the phoenix can rise from the ashes but whatever way you look at it, Jeremy Philips has pulled off a Houdini act.
Nice work Mr Philips
Para #3 do you mean “BWM”?
AC
marketingfutures.com
Although BMF are arguably good enough to be mentioned twice, I did indeed mean BWM the second time! Now sorted – ta, AC.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
The hope now has to be that the various ‘guts and more’ founders of the high quality agency assets that remain will soon get the hard earned returns they deserve, for what they have painstakingly built!
The next step is surely the sale of BMF, Naked Communications and BWM.
There’s not a whole lot of value remaining in what’s left after that.
Really not clear on photons reason for being. It’s a bit part company with no model. Let it die for gods sake.
This chart sums up the plummet of Photon. In 2007 it was vastly overvalued
at over $125 a share. Today it has actually risen to a new recent high of 6 cents (after being at 3 cents for a while) and settled back at 5 cents a share. Surely its time to flog whats left anf shut it down!!
http://www.google.com/finance?.....;q=ASX:PGA
Austar was 17 cents and then went to $1.80. This is an opportunity – could be any way. In the end WPP will buy the rest of the agencies. They always do.
share price has gone up 9.6% to $0.0570….
That is a good outcome for Photon. Well done to the $ men who pulled it off