"Rain", Slon.ru and "Big City" will unite into a holding and will hold an IPO on the Moscow Stock Exchange
According to the Forbes publication, the Dozhd TV channel, the Slon.ru publication and the Big City magazine will unite into a single holding for the initial public offering of shares on the Moscow Stock Exchange. Alexander Vinokurov, an investor of these projects, told reporters about this (previously he was the main shareholder, and later the general director of the investment bank KIT Finance.). The financial volume of placement in money can be from 300 million to 700 million rubles. Terms of possible placement are not called.
Part of the funds raised in this way, according to Vinokurov, is planned to be spent on the introduction of a new financial model - the created holding will move from the sale of advertising to the creation of premium paid content distributed by subscription. A similar scheme is already working on the Dozhd TV channel; in the near future, paid content will also appear on the Slon.ru portal.
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Vinokurov told Forbes that in the first 9 months, “Rain” managed to earn more than 70 million rubles from the sale of content. About 70 thousand people have subscribed to the site, and about 25 thousand more regularly pay for viewing individual programs.
For the first time reports about the plans of “Rain”, “Big City” and Slon on the merger appeared in the fall of 2013, but then everything remained at the level of rumors. Vinokurov says that at that time “Rain” was close to becoming self-sufficient, therefore the need to raise funds through the placement of shares on the stock exchange has disappeared. However, later the situation changed and the channel’s business performance deteriorated significantly.
Problems of “Rain” began with a poll on TV, which caused public outrage. As a result, many cable and satellite operators have excluded the TV channel from their packages, which has led to a reduction in its coverage by 85%. Along with the reduction in the audience, “Rain” was abandoned by many partners and advertisers, which led to the need for redundancy - by now about half of the employees have already left the channel. According to Vinokourov, the management of Dozhd is negotiating the return of the channel to the grid of operators, but it’s far from all that can be agreed upon.
Forbes notes that in 2013, the revenue of the Dozhd TV channel amounted to 361.9 million rubles, revenues of the Slon.ru website reached 105.5 million rubles, and the Big City publication - 63.3 million (against 59.8 million).
At the beginning of June 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consulting company, presented its study on the prospects for the growth of Russian media revenue. According to analysts, in the next five years, players in the online media industry will earn four times more. Not only will the online advertising segment grow, the share of paid content will also increase.
In May of this year, there were reports that RBC holding plans to switch to a scheme with a paid subscription. Subsequently, this information was not confirmed, but a poll conducted by the Zuckerberg Call ”media managers showed that most of them are confident in the prospects of a paid content model.
The news of the intention of the holding "Dozhdya", "Big City" and Slon.ru to hold an IPO was not the first to be associated with the Moscow Stock Exchange. Recall that earlier this week, Yandex first announced and then placed it on the Russian stock exchange in addition to the already trading shares on the Nasdaq.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/225385/
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