Citing prevailing market conditions, Univision today said it will not move forward with its proposed initial public offering and requested the withdrawal of its Form S-1 on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Talks of a Univision IPO go back at least six years, with the company hiring handlers and filing the Form S-1 with the SEC in 2015. That filing showed multimillion-dollar losses. Market conditions forced the company to postpone the IPO.
In the most recent quarter, Univision reported a $104 million profit, but it will likely feel the loss of World Cup advertising this year – the first time it won’t air the games in its history, as Telemundo prepares to capitalize on its ownership of the Spanish-broadcasting rights to this year’s competition in Russia.
Univision also announced that it has promoted Peter H. Lori to Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately. He succeeds Francisco (Frank) J. Lopez-Balboa who is leaving the company.
A former Goldman Sachs banker investment banker, Lopez-Balboa was hired in 2015 to help shepherd the elusive IPO.
At the time, Lori was the interim CFO.
Lori who joined the company in 2005, was most recently Executive Vice President, Finance, Chief Accounting Officer and Deputy Chief Financial Officer for UCI.
Market issues they say ? Anyway they put it, any turn they tweak the tortilla, goes to the same result. A disaster.
This company has been as it will, also a shame, a disgrace, a waste.
Comparing it with what it used to be is depressing.
From the moment it was sold, that it was given the wheel first to Saban and Co, then handed to Azcarraga/Falco/Lee: an fiasco after another.
Have you checked our current medical plan, for example ?
The rounds of laid off ?
The moral down the drain ?
But wait, the bad part is that the worse, is yet to happen.
From Veronica Villafane’s excellent blog “Media Moves”.
It could be my own perception, but I don’t think that it has so much to do with the current hatred towards immigrants and Mexicans as it does with the inability of Univision’s top management (Randy Falco, the CEO is leaving) to unify all of Univision’s moving parts into a coherent whole. Univision owns, of course, Univision, but they have the faltering Fusion, which never either got distribution or an audience; they have a fragmented series of sites, no real mobile offer, got rid of an entire media category that would have bolstered their audience (Radio) and funneled a ton of people into its other offerings… so, yeah, lots and lots and lots of moving parts, no coherent envelope to fit it into.