Next Media 'in strong position' after Taiwan TV sale
Sale of Taiwan television operations has left Lai Chee-ying with time to seek out the best offers for his Apple Daily and other print interests
Next Media is in a strong financial position after selling its loss-making television business in Taiwan and can take its time in negotiating the price of its print assets with potential buyers, industry insiders say.
Yang Chih-hung, former president of the school of communication at Ming Chuan University in Taiwan, said selling the television business was a good deal for Next Media chairman Lai Chee-ying. "Lai got rid of loss-making assets," Yang said, adding that there was no urgency in selling the printing business.
"and are profitable and influential," he said.
On Monday, Next Media agreed to sell its Taiwan television unit because it was unable to get a cable television licence. Its Taiwan television and multimedia operation made a loss of HK$1.17 billion during the year to March 31, compared with a loss of HK$459 million in the preceding year.
The company announced on September 4 that it was in talks with third parties to sell its printed media interests.
In the past financial year, reported a profit of HK$197.5 million, a 7.6 per cent year-on-year decline, blamed on higher costs.
Yang said the newspaper had changed the way Taiwan print media worked with its wide coverage of close-to-everyday-life stories.
"Before there was , Taiwan papers put much of their resources into political reports. But showed us that perhaps most people don't care so much about the so-called important issues when they read newspapers."
Clement So York-kee, professor of the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said it was hard to speculate if Lai would totally withdraw from Taiwan and focus on his media empire on Hong Kong.
The media group halted trading in its shares yesterday morning, after the stock soared 20 per cent to HK$1.02 on news that a Taiwanese tycoon had offered US$430 million to take over the print business.
"It is completely media rumours, it's completely false," Mark Simon, assistant to Lai, said.
Taiwan's said on Wednesday that Daniel Tsia of the Fubon Group offered US$430 million for and other print media in Taiwan.
"Nothing happened. There is no deal," Simon said.
The Hong Kong-listed company later said the suspension was pending an announcement of price-sensitive information.
Next Media's share price has almost doubled since September but still well down on HK$1.55 when Lai launched in May 2003.
