After having denied this possibility, at the end of the day, Urbano Cairo decided to improve his offer for Rcs MediaGroup. Last Friday evening, close to the deadline, Cairo Communication said in a statement it would offer 0.16 of a share in itself for every RCS share, up 33 percent from the initial 0.12 it offered in April. The new offer values RCS shares at 0.67 euros each vs the official price of 0,78 of last Friday. ( see here a previous post by BeBeez and the press release). Cairo’s offer becomes very close to the 0,70 offer in cash made by Investindustrial toghether with a group of core shareholders in RCS with the vehicle International Media Holding. Cairo said that, if successful, it would proceed to merge RCS into its existing media conglomerate, freeing the existing cash present in the holding company (€ 105 ml). According to a company business plan the new group would reach 1.3 billion euros in revenues in 2017. The shareholders of Cairo Communication will improve the value of their stake in term of voting power, if mantaining the stake for at least two years. Cairo Communication improved the forecast for the 2018 fiscal year with an ebitda of € 210 ml. vs the € 140 ml forecasted by RCS. The board of the directors decided two other things. The first is the distribution of an extrordinary dividend in case of not having realised the acquisition. The second is to move the expiration of the new offer to july 15, the same of the counter offer of Investindustrial. Last friday the Board of RCS expressed a positive opinion on the industrial aspects included in Investindustrial’s offer with a good fit with RCS industrial plan (see the press release) . The same Board examinated the fainess opinion made by experts about the Investindustrial’s offer, and the conclusion was that the offer is not fair enough. Last Thursday RCS signed the contract with the banks about the refinancing program for the € 325 ml debt which was a condition for both the offers.
