Barnes & Noble split itself into two separately, publicly-owned companies on Monday. Shares in the retail bookseller began trading at about 65 percent of the value of the previously combined operations, with a market cap of about $1.3 billion, while shares at Barnes & Noble Education dropped below their “when issued” trading level from last week, priced at around $12.65 a share in early morning trading. (With fewer shares outstanding than BKS, BNED is pointing to a market cap of a little over $600 million.)
Finance
International: PRH Australia Sells Bookworld to Booktopia; Harper Brasil, With Ediouro; Harlequin UK Layoffs From Harper Consolidation
Penguin Random House Australia has sold Bookworld, the online bookseller that operates two sites based on the former Borders Australia and Angus & Robertson assets, to their larger rival Booktopia. The sale is expected to increase Booktopia’s sales from $54 million (AU) in 2014 to an estimated $90 million by the end of 2015. Amazon is thought to sell $250 million to $300 million of books to Australia annually. Terms were not disclosed but PRH Australia had “paid less than $5 million for the assets of Borders and A&R after the collapse of their parent, REDgroup Retail,” rebranding as Bookworld the following year. […]
Merger Negotiations, Italian Style
After a 10-hour meeting, the board of Italy’s RCS Media Group provided a polite, positive but inconclusive step forward on Mondadori’s bid to purchase RCS’s book publishing division — a process which began in February. The board “unanimously agreed to mandate the chief executive officer to proceed with the negotiations and the definition of the contractual terms,” at the same time “reserving its final decision regarding the disposal of the asset.” With Italian August vacation looming, that decision is not expected at least until September. For the first six months of 2015, in reporting preliminary results, RCS said “publishing revenue remained stable, […]
Market Mulls Barnes & Noble Split
Barnes & Noble officially spins off Barnes & Noble Education as a separate, publicly-traded company next Monday, when we’ll start to get a clearer view of how investors value the two distinct parts. The company itself declared BNED worth 38.7 percent of the whole — since each BKS stockholder gets .632 shares of the new spin-off company as a dividend. But BNED began provisional “when issued” trading last week. There has been very little action in those shares, which is not so unusual, but in the limited market, the price has dropped 8.5 percent, to $13.50 a share. With 48 […]
Blackboard Owners Hire Bankers to Sell Company
Software company Blackboard, a staple of high school and college classrooms, is exploring a sale, hoping for a valuation of up to $3.4 billion, Reuters reports. According to “people familiar with the matter” Blackboard’s majority owner Providence Equity Partners has hired Deutsche Bank and Bank of America to run an auction and two anonymous people suggest the target would be “a valuation between 14 times to 17 times EBITDA,” currently at around $200 million annually. Providence took Blackboard private in 2011 for $1.64 billion (and took on $130 million in net debt.)
Briefs: Another Pearson Sale, RCS to Meet on Mondadori Offer, and More
Following their big £844 million sale of the FT to Nikkei, Pearson acknowledged over the weekend that they are in talks with the co-owners of The Economist about selling their 50 percent stake in that organization as well. A Bloomberg source says that separate sale could yield another £400 million for Pearson. Separately, The Bookseller reports that Harper UK has negotiated a new sales agreement with Amazon, though they have no details. Italy’s RCS will discuss the buyout offer from Mondadori for their book publishing division at their July 30 board meeting to review the first-half 2015 results, La Republicca reported. […]