The French media giant’s shares rose on reports that it may be exploring a London listing for its Canal + channel in what could prove to be a much needed boost for the London Stock Exchange.
The French billionaire Vincent Bollore, who owns Vivendi, announced that he was thinking of listing its pay-TV branch, Canal+ in the UK. Pay-TV requires viewers to pay a subscription fee to watch certain channels or programmes.
Bollore, dubbed the ‘French Murdoch’ is a financial backer for the French far-right party National Rally, headed by Marine Le Pen. Vivendi, a mass media giant, also owns other brands such as Havas, Gameloft, Vivendi Village, Prisma Media and Dailymotion.
The decision to take Canal+ public comes following Vivendi seeing a considerable downturn to its valuation following the 2021 listing and distribution of Universal Music Group. As such, the company has found it more difficult to focus on expanding many of its subsidiaries.
Therefore, the Canal+ listing is likely to be a way to raise capital, with the company already having seen robust growth worldwide and attracting significant investor interest.
Vivendi has also revealed that it plans to take Havas, its public relations and advertising company public as well as an investment company with a majority stake in Lagardere Group public in the near future too.
The listing is likely to take place later this year, with the company working with banks and other advisors to iron out the details. However, the exact price of the listing has not been revealed yet.
The company recently reported first quarter 2024 revenues of €4.275 billion, which was an increase of 5.4% compared to the same period last year.
What could the Canal+ listing mean for the UK stock exchange?
The Canal+ listing comes as a time when there is renewed investor interest in the UK stock market, after a period of downturn marked by companies such as Arm Holdings, Flutter Entertainment and Smurfit Kappa all leaving for the US.
However, in the last few months, other new companies such as Raspberry Pi, Shein, and Rosebank Industries have all chosen to list in the UK, bolstering investor confidence and renewing interest in the London Stock Exchange once more.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell said: “From the point of view of those investors with exposure to the UK equity market, the bad news is that aggregate consensus forecasts for the members of the FTSE 100 index fell by 4% in the first six months of this year to £247 billion (€294.13 billion). The good news is that £247 billion is still a record high, and it therefore helps to justify why the index is trading close to an all-time peak.”
Mould highlights that in comparison to other stock exchanges in the US, Europe and Japan, UK equities could be a good bargain.
“The UK still looks cheap. Investors now have to decide whether the forecasts are any good, what momentum is like and what are the biggest swing factors (to the upside and downside), as the answers to those questions may help them determine whether the UK equity market is cheap and undervalued or cheap because it simply deserves to be so.”
