Technicolor Keeping PRN
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Premier Retail Networks is no longer for sale. Technicolor has decided to keep the company and integrate it into its Entertainment Services segment.
As is well-known in the industry, PRN was on the open market for years, and speculation swirled as to who might buy the Technicolor-owned firm. We had heard several rumours as we speculated. And from what we’d heard, no-one had made an offer acceptable ie. big enough, to satisfy the current owners.
Now we have learned – buried deep in a press release coming from Technicolor in Paris regarding Technicolor having a binding offer from the FCDE for its Grass Valley Head-end Business – that “Offers received from potential buyers of PRN did not provide satisfactory conditions for the Group. Therefore, taking into consideration a number of factors, including PRN’s business achievements in 2010, the improvement in the advertising market in general, and the place based media market specifically, as seen over the past quarters, the Group believes greater value can be created by developing the PRN business”.
“As a consequence, the Group has decided to end the disposal process for PRN, which will be consolidated as part of its Entertainment Services segment within continuing operations going forward”.
“Based on the financial performance of this activity in 2010, the Group expects PRN to contribute positively to its EBITDA and cash flow generation for the full year.”
Wow! It’s been a long haul wondering who, if anyone, would buy it. Now the fun is over and we know!
February 24th, 2011 at 04:37 @234
This press release will no doubt top the list of fiction that everyone in our industry gets so frustrated about. A failed process to sell a seriously declining business is hardly a reason to issue a press statement filled with joy. I thought PRN just lost Best Buy and Target. Is there much left there?
February 24th, 2011 at 19:40 @861
Well there is news here at least – PRN is off the table. And please, the honey-glazed financial spin here is not remotely as harmful as the US-based networks lying outright about their audience sizes and venue deployments.
Actually feel rather bad for the PRN people right now, as they have legitimately extracted a huge amount of revenue from major bluechip marketers in the US. This is a very public strategic failure for ad-based dooh networks.