Presspublica, owned by Mecom Group, has acquired ‘Zycie Warszawy’, the leading local daily newspaper in Warsaw, with average 21k copy sales. Signing of the transaction has been expected, after owner of the loss making ‘ZW’ declined to sell the title to Polskapresse, which is trying to establish a national daily based on the number of local dailies.
Our view: It is another stumbling block for PolskaPresse to launch a national newspaper based on bunch of local titles, a potential rival to ‘Gazeta’, still in 2007. While we could see a positive market impact of the news today, we believe that much of the positive outlook for ‘Gazeta’ keeping its very high advertising market share is already priced in. We reiterate our Hold rating for the stock.