JC Decaux Acquires CEMUSA in 80M Euro Deal

March 17, 2014 by Dave Haynes

The biggest OOH company in the world just took out one of its competitors, and got some prime ad properties in the process.

JCDecaux SA has signed an agreement for the acquisition of 100% of CEMUSA  for an “enterprise value” of 80 million euros. The closing of the transaction, says a release today, is subject to standard regulatory conditions and the final value of the transaction will be adjusted for standard net debt and debt like adjustments at closing.

Created in 1984, CEMUSA operates in street furniture and transport in five countries: the United States, Brazil, Spain, Portugal and Italy. With 57,000 advertising panels, CEMUSA generated revenues of 142 million euros in 2013.

I was cross-eyed trying to sort out how Decaux bought a company that did 142 million Euro in sales last year for 80 million Euro, but ScreenMedia Daily dug up some useful information. The parent company is selling off assets like crazy to work off a 2.7 billion Euro debt. Now it makes sense.

This acquisition will establish and develop JCDecaux’s presence in the world-class cities of New York, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon and Genoa, and across 41 Spanish airports, including those of Madrid and Barcelona.

Jean-Charles Decaux, Co-Chief Executive Officer of JCDecaux, said: “We are looking forward to this agreement that will allow us to extend our operations in five countries and to benefit from the expertise of CEMUSA’s teams. With this new agreement, we will offer for the first time both a high quality street furniture network delivering prime downtown audiences in the three biggest US markets as well as in San Francisco and Boston and a national street furniture network in Brazil. This will imply further investments in Southern European countries in order to improve our commercial offer in a highly competitive media sector with a strongly consolidated TV market and fast growing internet sector.”

Key Figures for the Group

• — 2013 revenues: EUR2,676m
• — JCDecaux is listed on the Eurolist of Euronext Paris and is part of the Euronext 100 index
• — No.1 worldwide in street furniture (480,400 advertising panels)
• — No.1 worldwide in transport advertising with more than 145 airports and more than 290 contracts in metros, buses, trains and tramways (377,000 advertising panels)
• — No.1 in Europe for billboards (191,000 advertising panels) — No.1 in outdoor advertising in the Asia-Pacific region (211,400 advertising panels)
• — No.1 worldwide for self-service bicycle hire
• — 1,082,400 advertising panels in more than 60 countries
• — Present in 3,700 cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants

I am pretty certain BroadSign has the software concession with Decaux, so there’s likely some tapping toes around that company about the prospects for more software licenses sold for at least some of those 57,000 CEMUSA panels.