Primus Telecommunications Group (NYSE:PTGI, news, filings) said yesterday that it has hired Jefferies & Company to explore various strategic alternatives. Primus’s strongest businesses are in Canada and Australia, but they also have the low margin former Arbinet IP and voice exchange business they bought earlier this year as well as some customers in the US and Europe. The list of alternatives under consideration goes on at length:
“… may include (but may not be limited to) a sale, merger or other business combination involving PTGi, a recapitalization of PTGi, a joint venture arrangement, the sale or spinoff of PTGi assets or one or more of its business units, or the continued execution of PTGi’s business plans.”
But which seems likeliest? I’m going to have to go with breaking it up and selling the pieces. It’s just hard to envision one particular buyer that fits this collection of revenue and assets.
One might suggest Level 3 might view Primus as a way to expand into Canada and Australia, but as far as I know there’s little if any actual fiber involved and Level 3 would have no interest in the former Arbinet piece. Is there another international buyer out there, maybe Tata?
Hmmm, it just seems more likely they could get the most value out of all that revenue by selling it off in pieces to local buyers.
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Categories: CLEC · Mergers and Acquisitions
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I’d say MTS Allstream is a contender to buy Primus Canada. Allstream doesn’t have a VoIP offering and Primus has a very solid VoIP platform. Primus also runs a few datacenters and a decent sized IP network. Seems like it would be a nice addon to them.
Seems reasonable.