At a Morgan Stanley conference held earlier this week in Barcelona, WPP’s CFO Paul Richardson says the group is planning to sell up to 80% of its market research division Kantar, in a bid to address recent weak company performance.
Last month, WPP started a formal process to review the future ownership of Kantar, looking at potential external partners, but stressing that it would retain a stake in the business. This comes following reports of 4.9% fall in revenue from their Data Investment Management division, which includes Kantar TNS, Kantar Millward Brown and Lightspeed, as well as other specialist firms.
According to analyst estimates, the business is currently valued somewhere between $3 billion and $4 billion, and estimates say sale of it could bring WPP $4.9 billion. Richardson said the WPP’s remaining stake in Kantar would range, between 20% and 49%, depending on the price.
In addition, Richardson said that the company has identified smaller ‘disposal targets’ and is looking at ways to offload them in an attempt to cut its debt-to-earnings ratio.
