(Bloomberg) — Schibsted ASA, the largest Scandinavian media group, is preparing to kick off a sale of its Lendo fintech business, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Schibsted is working with Citigroup Inc. to gauge interest in Lendo, operator of Sweden’s biggest loan-comparison website, following a strategic review of the business, the people said. It plans to start formally soliciting bids after the summer, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
Lendo’s marketplace allows visitors to shop for everything from consumer and business loans to credit cards and mortgages. It started in Sweden in 2007 and expanded into other Nordic countries as well as southern Europe. The business may fetch as much as 450 million euros ($458 million) in a sale, the people said.
Schibsted’s A shares jumped as much as 6.7% on Thursday, the biggest intraday gain in more than four months. They were up 5.6% at the close Thursday in Oslo.
The sales process is kicking off in the face of market volatility and tightening credit conditions, which are crimping mergers and acquisitions volumes more broadly. Lendo could attract interest from industry players as well as private equity funds, the people said. Technology-focused buyout firm Silver Lake agreed in June to buy Facile.it, Italy’s largest price-comparison website, from a consortium including EQT AB.
Schibsted controls some of the top newspapers in Norway and Sweden including Aftenposten, Verdens Gang and Svenska Dagbladet. Its portfolio also includes a number of digital marketplaces as well as a significant stake in Adevinta ASA, the $9.7 billion online classifieds business.
An outright sale of Lendo “would be an encouraging development, given question marks over its synergies with the company’s core business,” Tom Ward, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a research note Thursday.
A deal valued at 450 million euros would represent about 24 times the unit’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, he said. Any divestment could provide a significant windfall that would comfortably bring Schibsted’s debt ratio into the lower half of the company’s target range, according to Ward.
“A move of this kind could open up capacity for bolt-on M&A to bolster the key marketplace arm,” Ward added.
A spokesperson for Schibsted said the company has been running a strategic review of Lendo to maximize its potential, and it’s progressing according to plan. Schibsted expects “to have more visibility on the outcome by the end of the year,” the spokesperson said, declining to comment further. A representative for Citigroup declined to comment.
(Updates with share movement in fourth paragraph, analyst comments from seventh paragraph.)
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