Televisa shares fell 5% to their lowest price since October 2003, after Bloomberg reported that SoftBank was considering selling its stake in TelevisaUnivision.
This Friday, the shares of the company chaired by Emilio Azcárraga closed at a price of 20.44 pesos, a drop of 4.8% compared to Thursday’s close. So far this year, the firm has registered a drop of 47%, which represents a loss of market capitalization of 49,745.9 million pesos (2,376 million dollars).
In a note, Bloomberg noted that shares sank after it was reported that SoftBank Group is considering selling its stake in US broadcaster TelevisaUnivision, where Televisa is the largest shareholder.
In 2021 Softbank led a $1 billion investment in Univisión together with ForgeLight, Google and The Raine Group, which financed the deal through which Univisión acquired Televisa’s content business and created Televisa-Univisión.
Currently, Televisa is the main shareholder of TelevisaUnivisión with 45%, followed by Forgelight with approximately 22% and Searchlight with 18%, and the rest divided between Google, Liberty Global, The Raine Group and Softbank.
“We believe that it is a widespread opinion that, given the current circumstances, Softbank will seek to sell assets on which it can obtain a reasonable valuation, and one of those assets could be TelevisaUnivision. If Softbank finally decides to sell, we believe that it is not necessarily a reflection of a negative evaluation of the company,” Gerardo Cevallos, brokerage analyst at Vector, said in a report.
At the moment, the Vector analyst indicated that, despite the fact that the information on the sale is not confirmed, it is a possibility, since Softbank has recently registered record losses due to the sharp drop in the valuations of its investments in the technology sector, due to which announced that it would implement a dramatic cost reduction and it has also been reported that it is accelerating the sale of assets to strengthen its balance sheet.
The Bloomberg consensus estimates a 12-month target price of 48.04 pesos per share, which would mean a potential return of 135%. In addition to the fact that 86% of the analysts who give it coverage issue a buy recommendation.
