It’s now 6h45m a.m and my girlfriend woke me up about 40 minutes ago. She got back home from Turkey yesterday, and I just noticed that she had forgotten to adjust the clock for the 1 hour time difference. I’m not a morning person at all, but will try to make use of the extra time before work by starting a write-up on Canal+, a French media company with a very interesting structure.
Let’s get the complicated part out of the way. There are 3 separate Canal+ entities that must be distinguished before diving deeper into the valuation:
- Canal+ Group: owned 100% by Vivendi. Canal+ Group has an 80% stake in Canal+ France. It also has other assets such as Canal+ Régie (100%), Itélé (100%), Cyfra+ (75%) and StudioCanal (100%).
- Canal+ France: owned 80% by Vivendi and 20% by Lagardére. Canal+ France owns 48.5% of Canal+ SA. It also has other assets such as Canal+ Overseas (100%) and Canal+ Distribution (100%).
- Canal+ SA or Societe d'Edition de Canal Plus (C+ for simplification) is the company that I’m interested in. The company offers 6 exclusive channels: Canal+ channel, Canal+ Cinéma, Canal+ Sport, Canal+ Family, Canal+ Hi-Tech and Canal+ Décalé. More details further down.
Source: Societé d'Edition de Canal Plus 2011 Annual Report
