Centaur Media Share Discussion Threads

[tom111] 17/6/2009 19:19

Standing up well against the market,but then again this company has little debt and can see out the recession

[coffeelito] 16/6/2009 14:34

from whom oh wise one ? Haymarket ?

[gyau] 16/6/2009 11:44

no a bid awaits

[fugwit] 16/6/2009 10:02

200dma and 50wma may provide should provide some resistance, have taken profits early so a reversal would suit nicely if it comes.

[gyau] 11/6/2009 09:20

done that now

[fugwit] 21/4/2009 17:16

If cau pass the 34 & 39 resistance levels then 52p seems pretty feasible, have been quietly holding from 19 and 23 so hopefully we can keep heading north.

[tom111] 09/4/2009 21:49

The media sector seems to be leading the way at the moment

[coffeelito] 16/12/2008 16:25

"Centaur is a media company riding the wave of recovery at the moment it seems."

LOL! Those were the days my friend.

[sellitnow] 28/11/2008 15:09

Indeed, this is a smoke and mirrors company with little substance, most of the stuff it does you can get free anyway, sell

[mryesyes] 27/11/2008 23:38

I think this is an example of the Chairman buying but being simply wrong,
he has bought on every downturn, but then 2 weeks later another downturn
This company is overstaffed, has one big marketing title and a lot of dross
and I think it likely to be bought out at around 10p once the price is 5p
Sorry

[mikeoverton] 06/8/2008 10:48

time to jump in

[grigor] 09/6/2008 00:00

United Business Media and Informa hold talks on £3 billion merger

[grigor] 14/5/2008 11:30

Mixed trading statement but in line with expectations

[grigor] 10/5/2008 12:13

Financial Times

Investors tune out of small media groups
Published: May 9 2008 23:16 | Last updated: May 9 2008 23:16

These are dark days for the UK's small commercial media companies, overshadowed by scandal and with their share prices locked in a cellar.

But two deals announced in recent days have shone a ray of light into the gloom, albeit they could signal the end of an era in which media entrepreneurs believed that the stock markets represented the sunny side of the street.

UBC's market capitalisation at the time stood at less than £14m. It had £4m in cash and its remaining division had 2007 earnings which, on a multiple of only 10 would value them at £6.5m. So the deal suggested that the company was being seriously undervalued by the market.

Then on Friday, Tinopolis, the Welsh television producer that makes Question Time for the BBC, announced an agreed £44.7m approach from the private equity house Vitruvian that valued the shares at 51 per cent over their six-month average price on Aim.

Ron Jones, chairman of Tinopolis, said: "Small cap companies have fallen a bit out of favour with institutional investors, while media companies in that segment particularly have been disadvantaged by the publicity surrounding sleaze and deceit [on premium-rate telephone services], so together that has created a difficult environment.

"We came to the conclusion that we had gone on the market to secure the right funding to develop the business. Once it became difficult to do that, if not actually closed to us, we were really looking for a new funding structure."

Toby Wyles of Vitruvian added: "I think we have got into a bit of a negative cycle.

"Entrepreneurial businesses came to Aim and other bourses round Europe for currency to grow their businesses and in return they promised investors growth in the share price in particular.

The problem is that, with the lack of liquidity in the market and big institutional investors focusing their portfolios more and more on large-cap stocks where there is a lot of liquidity, both parties have become frustrated.

"Companies haven't been able to get funding and the investors have grown frustrated that the share prices have gone sideways. For many of those companies, the stock market is just not the right price."

The same thinking seems to be driving RDF Media. Hit by the the fall-out from a row over a promotional video for its documentary on the Queen that was misleadingly edited, the company is now heading for a management buy-out.

Andrew Walsh, analyst at Landsbanki, said: "There are a number of reasons why we are seeing this, but one of the main factors is that these are lowly-rated low liquidity companies with earnings visibility issues and in the current climate, portfolio managers are trying to de-risk as much as they possibly can."

Patrick Yau, an analyst at Ingenious Securities, added: "It represents quite an interesting trend.

"This morning we saw Shed Media shares moving up, presumably because they are next in line and have been rated far more modestly than the multiples which these companies are valued on.

"I think Tinopolis have done the right thing."

He pointed to other areas of possible consolidation in the media sector where companies were trading at low multiples of their projected earnings, including the business-to-business publishers Centaur, which trades at 8 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, and Wilmington, trading on a multiple of 10.

Both analysts said they expected the remaining businesses of UBC Media to be taken private over the next few months.

Simon Cole, chief executive of the company, said: "The fact is that we are living in a neighbourhood where the streetlights aren't working and nobody wants to buy a house there, no matter how nicely we do up our properties."

Shares in UBC closed 1.6 per cent higher at 8.38p, Tinopolis rose 28 per cent to 43½p while Shed closed at 75p, up 8.7 per cent.

[oniabsta] 07/5/2008 09:43

For the newcomers like me.

Overview

Centaur Communications is one of the UK's largest independent business publishing and information companies. It employs over 600 people and is privately owned with the shares largely held by management and by City and US financial institutions. Centaur is headquartered in Central London (Poland Street, London W1), with other offices close by in Lexington Street and Wells Street.

The company has three subsidiaries which are not based in the West End - Perfect Information is based nearer the City in Chiswell Street, London EC1; Ascent Publishing (Home Building and Renovating, Public Sector Building and ABC&D) is based in Bromsgrove (just outside Birmingham) and IFA Events is based in Dorset.

Publishing
8 Weekly Titles: Marketing Week, Money Marketing, The Lawyer, Design Week, Precision Marketing, New Media Age, Fund Strategy, Mortgage Strategy.

1 Fortnightly: The Engineer.
11 Monthlies: Creative Review, Televisual, International Money Marketing, Employee Benefits, In-Store, Home Building and Renovating, ABC&D, What's New in Industry, Metalworking Production, Process Engineering, Protection Strategy.

2 Bi-monthlies: Hali, PSB.

1 Five times/yr: Lawyer2B.

2 Newsletters: Brand Strategy, publicprivatefinance.

10 Directories: 9 connected to individual magazines, plus Special Schools Guide.

Electronic Publishing
5 major industry portals - web-based community sites for discrete industries: mad.co.uk for the marketing, media, advertising and design community; The Lawyer.com for the legal community; E4engineering for the engineering community; Money Marketing Online for the financial services community; New Media Age online for the new media community.

These portals contain within them a number of distinct web sites, many of them substantial sites in their own right.

The Lawyer.com is the online community for the legal profession. It includes news and analysis from The Lawyer magazine, the most visited online recruitment site Lawyer Jobs.

mad.co.uk contains the web sites of a number of magazines and newsletters including Marketing Week, Design Week, Precision Marketing, Creative Review, In-Store Marketing, Televisual, and Brand Strategy.

E4engineering contains the web sites for all of the engineering group titles including The Engineer, Process Engineering and Metalworking Production.

4 magazine web sites: ABC&D, Home Building and Renovating, Employee Benefits and publicprivatefinance.

Perfect Information is the leading online database of city information, now available on the web. It includes all of the results and announcements made by the UK's quoted companies.

Conferences and Events
75 conferences: In 2002/03 we will run more than 75 conferences on marketing, direct marketing, legal, personal finance, PFI and broadcasting topics. These range from evening seminars to three day conferences, with the majority being two day events. Numbers involved range from 20 to 350. Many are in London, but we also hold events in major European cities.

18 events: - In 2002/03 we will run 18 major events. These include Awards dinners both for Centaur magazine titles and for external clients. Attendance at the dinners ranged from 200 people to over 1200.

Exhibitions
Centaur runs 34 exhibitions. Our shows include Business Travel in London, Manchester and Hong Kong, Insight 2003, The Hali Antique Carpet Fair, The In-Store Design And Marketing Show, The Homebuilding and Renovating Shows in Birmingham, London Harrogate, Peterborough and Edinburgh and The Employee Benefits Shows in London and Leeds. The company now runs one major Engineering show, Subcon, at the NEC.

Centaur also runs 15 regional events run through IFA UK which cater to the independent financial adviser market. All of these are one day events.

List Rental
Through Centaur Direct Marketing we rent lists drawn from the circulation lists of our own titles, plus we manage lists for other, third party, list-owners.

Action Packs
A number of magazines publish Action Packs - direct response card decks. And Ascent Publishing has a specialist Action Pack division which produces 14 titles targeted at specific disciplines across a broad spectrum of commerce and industry.

[grigor] 30/4/2008 19:08

£71k buy by Chairman

[grigor] 07/4/2008 20:59

Barclays buying

[grigor] 02/4/2008 20:02

.... "It's no more at the moment than what's the reason for our share price and what's the best way of unlocking shareholder value going forward in any form either as a public or a private company?"

Lally said that if the company's share price were to remain at the current level for "a long time" it would have to consider its position but currently, management had "reached no conclusions".

[grigor] 24/3/2008 15:55

Could be interest from other B2B media companies (Wilmington Group, United Business Media (CMP Information), Incisive Media, Reed Business Information, Informa, Haymarket Media Group etc).

There are a number of overlapping publications which could be merged and made cheaper.

B2B is thriving and benefiting from the Internet unlike B2C.

Good time to buy when the share price is depressed.

[coffeelito] 24/3/2008 02:15

Or unless unseen forces manage to short the share and keep it down until the (relatively very low)bid appears.

[grigor] 24/3/2008 01:54

Should be unless the directors manage to get away with a low ball offer.

[jeanal] 23/3/2008 10:59

Would an MBO be good for the share price?

[grigor] 17/3/2008 10:16

CENTAUR MEDIA, owner of Marketing Week and The Lawyer magazines, is calling in advisers to carry out a strategic review that could lead to a management bid to take the company private.

I've stopped watching and decided to buy following the announcement of a possible MBO or sale.

Similar to Wilmington Group with a better balance sheet yet far cheaper.

Chart starting to form a base.

I don't expect much to happen in the short-term.

UBM is also very cheap.

[the other kevin] 22/2/2008 11:57

Jean - That news is a week old, but reassuring nevertheless. I'm intrigued at the number of small sell trades, 76, 23, 36, 15, 76, 52 and now 13 and 62 on the book at 84.75 so far today. Similar trades every day. Can anyone explain?