By: Greenbackd
I’ve been closely following on Greenbackd the Kinnaras stoush with the board of Media General Inc (NYSE:MEG) over the last few months.
Kinnaras has been pushing the Board to “take advantage of the robust M&A market for both newspaper and broadcast television and to sell all operating units of MEG in order to retire existing corporate and pension debt and achieve a share price shareholders have rarely seen in recent years.”
It looks like Kinnaras has succeeded, with the board announcing recently that it had reached an agreement to sell its newspaper division, excluding the Tampa Tribune, to Warren Buffett’s BH Media Group for $142 million. In addition, Buffett would also provide MEG with a new Term Loan and revolver in exchange for roughly 20 percent of additional equity.
MEG is a provider of local news in small and mid-size communities throughout the Southeastern United States. It owns three metropolitan and 20 community newspapers and 18 network-affiliated broadcast television stations Virginia/Tennessee, Florida, Mid-South, North Carolina, and Ohio/Rhode Island.
Kinnaras’s Managing Member Amit Chokshi has a new post analyzing the sale and the valuation of the remaining rump of $MEG. Chokshi sees the valuation as follows (against a prevailing share price of $3.50):
A 6.8x multiple would imply a valuation of about $8.50/share when using my estimates for how MEG’s capitalization will look post the BH Media transaction and accounting for BH Media’s warrants. By year-end, it is possible that another $10-20MM in debt is reduced which would bring share value up close to $1. The reason the jump is so significant is because each dollar of cash flow erases some very expensive debt. In addition, pure-play broadcasters are valued from 6-9x EV/EBITDA and one could argue that MEG deserves a valuation closer towards the mid point or higher for its peers when factoring the disposal of newspapers and accounting for the high quality locations of its key stations.
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Lastly, as I’ve repeated in each prior post, another potential value creation event would be selling off the entire company. BH Media will now occupy a Board seat and I don’t expect the blind subservience other Board members have. Management has demonstrated a clear lack of competence in every facet of managing MEG. The only thing they have done thus far is get lucky in terms of finding a buyer for their assets and providing them financing. As an owner of MEG, BH Media will get an up close look at the type of management this team brings and I suspect will compare the value management adds or detracts. To any sane observer, management is just pitiful and MEG’s value suffers for it.
