Altice plans move into Portuguese media market after US IPO
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Altice plans move into Portuguese media market after US IPO

Altice, which owns Portuguese incumbent PT Telecom, is looking to buy Media Capital, a company that owns a number of Portuguese-language TV and radio channels.

The company said last night that it is “in exploratory discussions” about buying Media Capital from Spanish investor Promotora de Informaciones (Prisa), which owns 94% of the company. It made the statement after a request by the Portuguese Securities Market Commission – Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários.

The news comes just days after Altice raised $1.9 billion in an initial public offering of Altice USA, which owns its US cable TV businesses, Cablevision and Suddenlink. That IPO valued Altice US at $22 billion.

Altice did not say how much it was offering for Media Capital, but weekend reports – without mentioning Altice – said that Prisa’s chairman, Juan Luis Cebrián, was asking for €450 million.

Altice described Media Capital as “a Portuguese media group with leadership positions in TV broadcasting, audiovisual production, radio, digital, music and entertainment”. In fact it TVI, one of the the leading Portuguese free-to-air TV broadcasting channels, the news channel TVI24 and a number of other channels. It is also the second largest radio group in Portugal.




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