substantial value

DealBook: Barnes & Noble Considers Spinning Off Its Nook Unit

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg NewsThe company sees a bright future for the Nook.

Barnes Noble‘s Nook is selling exceptionally well, by the company’s reckoning. So the bookseller is considering spinning off the e-reader unit.

The company said on Thursday that it was beginning “strategic exploratory work” to separate the Nook division, in an effort to help the nascent business grow.

But a spinoff of the unit would raise questions about Barnes Noble’s ultimate fate. While holiday sales tied to the Nook, including both devices and digital content, rose 43 percent from the period a year earlier, the company’s brick-and-mortar sales rose just 2.5 percent.

And Barnes Noble said that it now expected to report a loss of $1.10 to $1.40 a share for this year, sending the company’s shares plunging nearly 30 percent in premarket trading.

Barnes Noble’s stock has fallen 5.2 percent in the last 12 months, closing at $13.55 on Wednesday.

Still, the company forecasts a bright future for the Nook, having endured many quarterly losses while investing heavily in the business. Barnes Noble said it was currently considering reporting Nook-related sales as a separate business segment, and added that it was in talks with potential partners to expand the Nook’s presence abroad.

“We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our Nook business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value,” William J. Lynch Jr., Barnes Noble’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The Nook’s numbers were not all rosy, however. Barnes Noble acknowledged that it had ordered too many of its black-and-white Nook devices, which fell short of sales expectations.

The potential spinoff is the latest strategic plan that Barnes Noble has explored in the last two years. The company previously shopped itself around, before deciding in August to sell a minority stake to Liberty Media for $204 million.

And it is has put its Sterling Publishing unit up for sale, according to the Media Decoder blog.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2ad466d6c070426ce123d40d3030e569

DealBook: G4S to Buy Danish Security Rival ISS for $8.2 Billion

G4S, via Bloomberg NewsJeff Gravenhorst, left, chief of ISS Holdings, and Nick Buckles, chief of G4S.

LONDON — G4S, the world’s biggest provider of security services, agreed Monday to buy a Danish rival, ISS, for about $8.2 billion to add cleaning and catering services and to accelerate its expansion in Asia and Latin America.

G4S plans to raise £2 billion, or $3.2 billion, in a rights offering to help pay for the acquisition, which is owned by EQT Partners and Goldman Sachs. The price tag, which includes debt, is roughly 8.5 times ISS’s earnings over the last 12 months, G4S said.

The acquisition comes about seven months after ISS shelved plans for an initial public offering amid jittery financial markets. It had planned to raise an estimated $2.5 billion.

A combined company would create a giant security company with about £16 billion in revenue, employing more than one million people in more than 40 countries. The group would offer clients services that include guarding shopping centers and cleaning offices, a market G4S said was worth about £500 billion worldwide.

“We believe this acquisition will transform our business, significantly accelerate the delivery of our solutions strategy and create substantial value for shareholders,” Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, said in a statement.

The acquisition would add to revenue in the first year and generate estimated pretax cost savings of £100 million by 2014, G4S said. In addition to the rights issue, G4S would use new debt facilities to finance the acquisition.

Mr. Buckles would remain chief executive of the combined group, and ISS’s chief executive, Jeff Gravenhorst, would head the combined European operations. The acquisition is subject to approval by shareholders and regulators.

“The combination of ISS and G4S is a good fit both industrially and culturally,” Ole Andersen, ISS’s chairman, said in a statement. “Together they can increase their exposure to the significant growth opportunities in emerging markets and accelerate their efforts in the growing market opportunity for integrated facilities services.”

Deutsche Bank and Greenhill advised G4S on the transaction.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=89ab3c6d5167ccccb9876681c152a67d

DealBook: Barnes & Noble Considers Spinning Off Its Nook Unit

DealBook: G4S to Buy Danish Security Rival ISS for $8.2 Billion

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