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Nielsen, Interbike’s Owner, Filing for IPO

Published June 6, 2010

NEW YORK, NY (BRAIN)—Nielsen Holdings, Interbike’s parent company, plans to go public, according to a filing late last week with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Nielsen also owns Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, which it licenses to the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

The company said in its 240-page prospectus that it hopes to raise $1.75 billion through an IPO to help pare down $8.6 billion in long-term debt and capital lease obligations. Last year Nielsen paid $495 million in interest payments on that debt. In the first quarter of this year, the company met debt payments of $147 million.

Of its current obligations, $4.7 billion is floating-rate debt. Every one percent increase in interest rates would add about $47 million in additional interest payments, the filing said.

Nielsen is a market-research firm that follows consumer habits and measures television and Internet usage. Last year Nielsen posted revenue of $4.8 billion with 96 percent of that amount generated by what it calls its “What Consumers Watch” and “What Consumers Buy” divisions. Those two divisions make up Nielsen’s data collection arm.

Its other division, Expositions, which includes Interbike, Outdoor Retailer, ASR and several dozen other trade shows, comprised only 4 percent of the company’s 2009 revenue, or $192 million.

Over the last four years, the company has shed many of its trade magazines including one of its best-known properties, The Hollywood Reporter, as management has re-focused the company on consumer data collection and new media.

Nielsen, formerly owned by the Dutch conglomerate VNU, was bought by a group of investors (AlpInvest Partners, Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Hellman & Friedman, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Thomas Lee Partners and later Centerview Partners) in a highly leveraged buyout for more than $10 billion in May 2006 near the market’s peak.

Following the purchase, Nielsen hired David Calhoun, former vice chairman of General Electric, as the company’s CEO and chairman of its Executive Board. Last year, Calhoun earned $6.3 million in salary, bonuses and other incentives.

Underwriting the IPO is a who’s who of financial heavyweights including J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Securities, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup Global Markets.

To read the complete filing click on above link.

-Marc Sani
msani@bicycleretailer.com

Topics associated with this article: Interbike

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