PrimaCom terminates sale discussions

German cable operator PrimaCom has announced that it has ended discussions on a possible sale of the company, as none of the offers met the valuation criteria. PrimaCom began formal negotiations in spring this year after receiving a number of unsolicited expressions of interest, and over the last few months the firm conducted negotiations with several interested parties. US-based Liberty Global’s German subsidiary Unitymedia KabelBW and former monopoly telco Deutsche Telekom were among the companies rumoured to be interested in making an offer for PrimaCom, which has around one million connected homes in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. ‘Throughout these discussions PrimaCom has continued to grow its subscriber base in line with its fully funded growth plan, and the conclusion of this process has no impact on the group’s operations or its strategy to further invest and serve its customers’ commented the cableco’s CEO, Joachim Grendel, adding: ‘PrimaCom has re-established significant momentum over the last twelve months and the business is firmly back on a growth trajectory.’ According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, PrimaCom’s lenders agreed to take over the company in a debt-for-equity swap in November 2010. In exchange for writing down PrimaCom’s loans, the creditors – US-based hedge fund Tennenbaum Capital Partners, Avenue Capital Group, ING and London-based Alcentra Group – acquired all of the shares in holding company Medfort Sarl.