French pay TV giant Canal+, which is behind “Paddington” producer Studiocanal, has officially split from parent company Vivendi in time for its 40-year anniversary. Making its debut solo on the London stock exchange on Monday, Canal+ enlisted a homegrown executive, Amandine Ferré — who has been at the company for 15 years and was most recently based in China — to “cut the cord” and engineer the IPO.
Canal+ shares opened this morning at 290p and dropped by about 20% after noon local time, giving the banner an estimated valuation of £2.4 billion. Ferré, who is chief financial officer and a member of Canal+’s management board, tells Variety that the fluctuations were anticipated. “We know that in the first few weeks, our share price is going to be a little volatile,” she says. But the exec is forecasting Canal+’s “shares price volatility will calm down in January.”
Ferré previously spearheaded the French TV group’s acquisition of Chinese streamer Viu and flew back from China to Paris earlier this year after getting a call from Canal+ Group CEO and Vivendi board member Maxime Saada, whom she’s known from her early days working as a strategy consultant at Roland Berger. “You only do a listing once in a career, so I wasn’t going to turn it down!” she says. Ferré, 41, comes in with a deep knowledge of both Canal+ and the international market, having grown up in Africa and lived in India and China. “I’ve had nine jobs in 15 years — It gives me a good overview of what the group does,” she says, citing her experience at Dailymotion, the Canal+-owned online video sharing platform, as well as Canal+ Tech and Studiocanal.
The listing of Canal+ is part of Vivendi’s company-wide split project which also sees advertising group Havas and retail giant Louis Hachette Group listed separately in Amsterdam and Paris, respectively.
Ferré says the idea behind the split is to seek a higher valuation for Canal+ and better leverage the growth of these assets. “Before the split, Vivendi was suffering from a so-called conglomerate discount,” she says. “It is our belief that the sum of the value of each entity in the Vivendi group, i.e. Havas, Canal+, Louis Hachette and all the other shareholdings was largely undervalued when compared to the actual value of Vivendi shares.”
It’s not the first time Vivendi has done this maneuver on high-profile assets. In September 2021, Vivendi scored a major coup by listing Universal Music Group, the music powerhouse whose talent roster includes Taylor Swift and Drake, in Amsterdam, and saw UMG’s shares skyrocket by 39% to reach a valuation of nearly $53 billion. Under the leadership of Canal+ Group’s supervisory board chairman Yannick Bollore, the spinoff plan is also meant to drive growth and synergy opportunities with Canal+’s subsidiaries overseas, including MultiChoice in Africa, Viaplay in Scandinavia and Viu in South-East Asia.
“The listing will enable us to use our stock as currency. We’ve already acquired shares in a number of companies and in the future, we may exchange shares. It opens up opportunities that we didn’t have before,” Ferré says.
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