Growth for Open-Minded Arbitron

Arbitron has announced good results, amid industry speculation about a possible sale. The US-based audience measurement specialist increased its revenue by 8.4% in 2004, from $273.6m to $296.6m.

$5.9 million of revenue growth came from the acquisition in March '04 of VNU's Marketing Resources Plus division (MRP), for $8.9 million in cash. Fourth-quarter revenue grew 11.4% from $65.4m in 2003 to $72.9m in 2004. The company says it is on track to score reasonable gains in Q1 of 2005 and, possibly, throughout this year.

Asked by an analyst whether the company was 'willing to be sold', President and CEO Steve Morris said during a conference call that the policy was to 'do what's in our shareholders' interest' and added that if a 'fair and reasonable offer' was received it would be brought to the board of directors for consideration. Speculation reported on the Billboard Radio Monitor, owned by media and information group VNU, suggests that VNU is an obvious candidate to make a bid, given its existing involvements with Arbitron. The two are working together on development of a national research panel in the US called 'Project Apollo' and VNU is also involved with development of Arbitron's Portable People Meter technology. Their joint venture Scarborough Research is now majority owned by VNU (50.5%) with the remainder owned by Arbitron, having started out 50/50.

On the subject of the PPM project, Morris said Arbitron would pursue it regardless of Nielsen's decision about participation, given that since its inception in 1992 Arbitron had invested $80 million in it.

In other news, VNU today announced that it has successfully completed the debt buy-back program it announced on January 10. In total, the company has accepted offers to sell an aggregate principal amount of EUR 1,101 million and for a total cash payment of EUR 1,170 million (excluding accrued interest), having accepted offers to sell for cash two major blocks of securities.

Arbitron is online at www.arbitron.com and VNU at www.vnu.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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