John Legend and Chrissy Teigen at Cannes Lions in 2019
(Picture: Getty Images for Twitter)The company behind the Cannes Lions advertising festival is considering a break-up of part of its business, moving some of its operations to list on the US stock market.
Ascential, which advises retailers and technology companies through brands including Flywheel and Perpetua, is currently listed in London, but could demerge its digital operations and list them separately in New York.
Its events operations, which include Money20/20 and RetailWeek-branded conferences, are expected to remain in the UK.
News of the potential split was first reported by Sky News over the weekend.
“As demonstrated on a number of occasions, Ascential’s board regularly evaluates the optimal organisational and capital structure for the business to continue both the successful delivery of the group’s strategy for the benefit of our customers and to maximise shareholder value,” the company said on Monday.
“Ascential confirms that it is in the early stages of evaluating the merits of a managed separation of certain assets of the group.”
It said that at this stage, any discussion were “exploratory” and may or may not lead to a deal, although investment bankers were reported to have been appointed to advise the company.
Ascential may be motivated to move its digital assets because digital marketing and insight providers tend to be more highly valued by US equity markets, meaning it could secure a rerating of that part of its business, the Sky report suggested.
Last month, Ascential reported full-year results which showed total company revenues for 2021 were £349.3m, up from £229.9m a year previously, although Covid was still dragging on its events performance.
Shares in Ascential closed on Friday at 331p, having dropped from 413p since the start of 2022.
