IPO for merged Hispanic nets
January 24, 2013
The $400 million merger of three television networks and an investment company is to create the first publicly traded TV company focused on the US Hispanic population.
InterMedia Partners said this week that it had agreed to merge its Cinelatino and Intermedia Español Holdings businesses with Azteca Acquisition, a $100 million investment vehicle founded by Gabriel Brener, owner of the Houston Dynamo football team.
The merger will bring together Cinelatino, the top-rated Spanish-language film network on cable television, with two Intermedia Español businesses: WAPA Americas, a cable network targeting Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean Hispanics living in the US; and WAPA TV, the largest broadcast TV network in Puerto Rico’s highly concentrated market.
A Nasdaq IPO of the Miami-based company, Hemisphere Media Group, will offer “the only way for the public to invest in a pure-play Hispanic TV/cable network business,” Peter Kern, managing director of InterMedia, said in a statement.