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Multibillion-dollar market research group Kantar is set to be broken up and sold by owners Bain and WPP, shifting from a plan to pursue a stock exchange flotation of the company over worries about the weak market for public offerings.
US private equity group Bain Capital acquired 60 per cent of Kantar in 2019, giving the company a valuation of about $4bn, while the advertising group WPP retained a minority shareholding.
Bain and WPP are now seeking to cash in on their investment while facing a difficult time for initial public offerings. A person close to the process said that a sale of the businesses would be a quicker and surer way to raise money than waiting for markets to be favourable for an IPO.
In January, Kantar sold off its media division, which runs the UK’s TV audience measurement system, to private equity group HIG Capital. Kantar’s owners got about a $1bn valuation for the business, which accounted for about 15 per cent of its revenues.
While Bain and WPP had previously been weighing up an IPO for the remaining business, they are now seeking to sell its large divisions, according to people familiar with the matter.
IPO markets across the globe have struggled to rebound from a post-pandemic slump, with buyout firms and other investors forced to sit on a record number of unsold assets.
One of Europe’s biggest flotations this year — a sale of shares in hotel room wholesaler HBX Group — flopped last month, with the stock falling as much as 11 per cent. Bain and WPP had not yet finalised a venue for Kantar’s potential IPO.
Kantar’s faster growing unit Numerator, a Chicago-based consumer and market intelligence company, could be sold as soon as this year, the people said.
In January, Kantor merged Numerator, which serves the North American market research sector, with its Worldpanel division to form a new global consumer data company.
Numerator provides first-party consumer data in the US and Canada, while Worldpanel has consumer data in 49 countries outside North America.
The new company claims to provide first-party consumer data representing almost 5bn consumers globally that can be used by brands, retailers, economists and Wall Street analysts. The combined company has 5,800 employees worldwide and now operates under the Numerator name.
Kantar has other divisions that manage panels of more than 170mn people that give opinions on areas such as marketing, and test the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
In a lender update in January, Kantar said it had $2.5bn of adjusted gross revenues through the first nine months of 2024, a 3 per cent increase compared with the same period a year earlier. It posted $509mn of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation in the period.
Bain, WPP and Kantar declined to comment.
