Monday, June 20, 2011

Cable & Wireless Worldwide climbs 2% on talk of $500m disposal

On a day when communications companies are in focus, Cable & Wireless Worldwide has not missed out.

The misleadingly named company is up 2% - a 0.97p rise to 48.34p - following reports it could sell its businesses outside the UK, which generate around 25% of its revenues. Indeed, the suggestion was it had already received an informal offer of around $500m for its global enterprise and carrier business from Hong Kong business Pacnet. Espirito Santo said:

Although CWW has previously stressed its commitment to growing these businesses, we would not be surprised to see a disposal as it still lacks scale and local expertise/knowledge in this region. We would welcome a disposal at a good price, particularly as global ambition was the cause of previous debacles at BT Global Services. A sale may also help sentiment towards CW's potential acquisitions in the UK hosting and apps segment (aka the Cloud) where the market is moving so fast that CWW may struggle to keep pace with internal investment alone (last week the press was speculating about CW acquiring 2e2, an IT services company, for around �360m). CWW's board is expected to consider Pacnet's bid this week.

But Mark James at Liberum Capital said:

I'd be very surprised if they achieved that sort of sum ($500m). Non UK is around 22% of CWW's gross margin. But cash generation ( given the overall company doesn't generate any) I suspect is minimal.


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2011/jun/20/cable-wireless-climbs

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