Four bidders still in for Com Hem
June 10, 2011
Four private equity companies have reached the second round of bidding for the Swedish cable company Com Hem. CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital, BC Partners and Cinven are involved in a process which values the company between $2.57 billion and $2.9 billion.
Com Hem, which is owned by Providence Equity Partners and Carlyle, is connected to about 40 per cent of Swedish households with three-quarters of them receiving broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. It is the largest competitor to Telia Sonera, the telecoms incumbent in Sweden, although it has tough competition from both digital terrestrial television and satellite broadcasting.
In the first quarter of 2011, its revenues of SKr1.05 billion were 5.1 per cent up on the previous year. The valuation represents between 7.5 and 8.5 times forecast 2011 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of SKr2.1 billion.
Carlyle and Providence bought Stockholm-based Com Hem in January 2006 for about $1.2 billion and merged it six months later with UPC Sweden, which it had bought from Liberty Global for $427 million.