CanWest to set share price at lower end of range

By PAM GRAHAM and PAUL PANCKHURST

CanWest MediaWorks will today reveal a share price at the low end of the $1.50 to $1.65 indicative range.

The Business Herald is picking $1.53 or $1.54.

Institutional investors who made bids on Thursday and Friday with investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere as part of the price-setting process will get about half of the stock they asked for.

The market is tougher on floats than it was two or three months ago, which may be a factor in the MediaWorks price.

Early market soundings had suggested $1.50 to $1.75, later pulled back to $1.50 to $1.65 in the prospectus.

The art of price-setting is in finding a number that satisfies the vendor but also leaves something on the table for the new investor.

Set too high, a price may sag on listing.

Set too low, the vendor is sold short.

MediaWorks comes after share sales by Freightways, Feltex Carpets, Pumpkin Patch, and Salvus Strategic Investments.

Floats by investment companies Colville Equities and StoreFund were both pulled.

CanWest MediaWorks is one of the biggest media operators in the country.

It owns free-to-air television channels TV3 and C4 and the RadioWorks group.

Its radio brands include More FM, The Edge, The Rock, Channel Z, The Breeze, Solid Gold and Radio Pacific.

CanWest took the share offer to an equities market hovering around seven-year highs.

Investors weighed the positives of a strong advertising market, stable earnings from radio, and respected management, against the volatility of TV3's earnings.

"I would have liked to see the float a year ago, so that there would be more runway to take off on," said one fund manager, referring to a buoyant advertising market expected to slow.

"I'm lukewarm on it," said another.

Big fund managers are also concerned the company will have a relatively small "free float", the number of shares that are freely traded rather than held in big blocks.

Owner CanWest Global Group is selling between 30 per cent and 36 per cent of the company that has bought its New Zealand assets.