Nielsen Rejects Private Equity Group’s Acquisition Bid

Nielsen Holdings PLC has turned down a bid by a private-equity consortium to purchase the media-measurement big, noting that the corporate feels the proposal “doesn’t adequately compensate shareholders for Nielsen’s development prospects.”

Shares within the firm, which has been beneath scrutiny for months as TV networks that signify a few of its greatest shoppers have sought new measurement work from rivals, soared greater than 40% on Monday on a report {that a} group that included Nielsen investor Elliott Administration Corp. sought to purchase the corporate for what may very well be round $15 billion, together with debt.

Nielsen mentioned its alternative was bolstered by conversations with considered one of its largest shareholders, The WindAcre Partnership, an investor since 2013. WindAcre declined to hitch the private-equity consortium and mentioned it might transfer to dam an acquisition if Nielsen selected to simply accept the bid. WindAcre, which has additionally been a major investor in Amazon and Google, “views Nielsen’s intrinsic worth to be considerably larger than values proposed by the consortium,” Nielsen mentioned in an announcement. WindAcre “has financial publicity” to round 14.4% of Nielsen’s shares, along with a 9.6% stake within the firm.

“We proceed to have robust confidence within the administration group and Nielsen’s technique to create long-term worth for shareholders,” mentioned James A. Attwood, chair of Nielsen’s board of administrators, in an announcement. “We’re all the time open to exploring any avenue to create worth for shareholders, however the Board is in settlement with WindAcre, considered one of our largest shareholders, that the Consortium’s proposal considerably undervalues the Firm. Additional reflecting our confidence within the Firm, we plan to start share repurchases, which we count on to be an essential factor of our ongoing balanced capital allocation technique.”

Even so, Nielsen has been beneath a microscope for months. TV networks and their house owners have grown disenchanted with Nielsen’s capacity to rely viewers who might watch their favourite packages by way of digital means, on cell screens on by streaming video. Nielsen has misplaced trade accreditation for its nationwide TV scores service, and is engaged on a brand new measurement methodology that may tabulate unduplicated cross-stream viewership, but it surely is not going to be rolled out in full for a number of months. In the meantime, most of the media corporations, together with NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and others have struck pacts with new measurement distributors to create so-called “alternate currencies” in time for the trade’s subsequent “upfront” ad-sales market.

Nielsen has confidence its present efforts to win again accreditation are on observe, together with a retooling of its audience-measurement know-how it believes will come on-line this yr. Nielsen has already struck a testing alliance with entities resembling Walt Disney Co. and Interpublic Group, and has begun to make out there new information analyzing unduplicated audiences who watch their favourite programming throughout linear and digital venues. The problem to that effort comes from the networks who’ve begun to create their very own audience-measurement efforts utilizing rivals resembling iSpot, ComScore and VideoAmp, in hopes that advertisers will begin shifting some portion of their media buys to be graded by their options.