US Fund Repertoire Partners increases stake in NZME to become major shareholder

San Francisco-based Repertoire Partners has taken its NZME stake to 19.94 per cent. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Repertoire Partners - a New York and San Francisco-based investment fund - has lifted its ownership stake in New Zealand Herald publisher NZME to just short of 20 per cent.

Repertoire Partners is a newly-established investment fund that took a 5 per cent stake in NZME earlier this year and had another 7 per cent of exposure through derivative contracts managed by UBS Group.

Notice that it had further increased its holdings to 19.949 per cent was posted on the NZX this week.

Last month Repertoire managing partner Deepak Sarpangal told BusinessDesk he thought NZME was “inordinately underappreciated” by local investors.

He said NZME - which owns a number of the country’s major radio stations, newspapers and news websites - was priced too low because there was still a perception that news businesses were fundamentally challenged by the decline in print media.

“But I think that’s a dated perception,” he told BusinessDesk.

“It’s not a dying, print media business. It’s a growing, increasingly transformed digital content information organisation”.

Repertoire joins the register with fellow Californian investment firm, Osmium Partners, which holds an 11.4 per cent stake.

NZME shares last traded on the NZX at $1.05c giving it a market capitalisation of $193.1 million.