Placid opening tipped for Sky TV, INL

Shares in a merged Sky Television and INL are expected to make a placid formal debut today, after almost a week of conditional trading.

In fact, they are expected to behave exactly the same way as Sky Television shares did on their own.

"The business itself is exactly same ... it is essentially the Sky TV business in a different corporate structure, and with a different balance sheet," said one analyst.

Quotation of INL and Sky Television shares was suspended on Tuesday, with shares in "Merger Company" - which will now be renamed Sky Network Television Ltd - quoted conditionally.

The new shares have traded between $5.55 and $5.78 over the four-day period, and closed 5 cents higher at $5.75 each with $2.4 million of shares having changing hands on Friday. The old Sky Television shares had finished at $6.95 - the lower price of the new entity reflecting the money paid out to shareholders through the deal.

Shareholders in Sky TV received $1.28 a share cash and one share in new Sky Television for each of their old shares. INL shareholders got $1.78 a share and 0.8360 of a share in the new, merged, company.

Forsyth Barr investment adviser Gordon Cullen said the volumes traded in the new shares had been about average compared with old Sky TV shares, with no significant outflow of INL or Sky TV shareholders.

"The stock [Sky TV] has performed extremely well, and with the capital repayment shareholders are already taking profit ... I wouldn't have thought there would be be a lot of pressure because people are getting profit paid."

The conditionally traded shares are already part of the sharemarket's top 10 index.