In this photo illustration, the French premium television channel, studio and distributor, Canal+ (plus) logo is seen displayed on a smartphone.
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Shares in French broadcaster Canal+ fell over 13% after their London stock market debut on Monday.
Media holding company Vivendi’s shareholders last week agreed to spin off Canal+, a pay TV and production company known for its live sports broadcasting and Studiocanal, which makes the Paddington film franchise.
Shares were trading around 252 British pence ($3.19) at 9:13 a.m. London time, down 13.1% from the open.
Paris-listed shares of Vivendi were meanwhile up 33.3% at 09:28 a.m. London time.
“Vivendi was suffering from a conglomerate discount. So when you looked at the value of Vivendi, it was less than 10 billion euros [$10.52 billion], and the estimate of the sum of the parts was much greater than that. So to unlock that value potential of each of these assets, hence the split,” Maxime Saada, CEO of Canal+, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday.
“[Canal+] used to be a very French-centric company, with approximately 9 million subscribers, and, in just 10 years, it has tripled its number of subscribers. Now two-thirds of our subscriber base is outside of France, in Africa, in Eastern Europe, in Asia, and, of course, in France,” Saada added.
Havas and Louis Hachette Group are also being spun off from the Paris-headquartered media conglomerate and will be listed separately.
“We are delighted with the very high adoption rate of our spin-off project. This undisputable result confirms the strong support of our shareholders for this transformative transaction,” Yannick Bolloré, chair of Vivendi’s board, said in a statement last week after the plan was approved, with over 97% of votes in favor.
This is a developing story and will be updated shortly.
