Broadcast-streaming. Hit by stubbornly poor trading and last month’s departure of the CEO after 10 years, Blackstone is rumoured to have appointed Deloitte to find a buyer for Ideal Shopping Direct which sells home, garden, kitchen, technology, health, beauty and craft products via UK shopping and craft channels on Sky, Freeview, Virgin and online. Blackstone acquired the parent company of Ideal World Shopping Channel and Craft Channel from Inflexion private equity for £200m in 2015. But revenues have drifted down from £149m in 2014 to £142m in 2016 and are thought to have fallen to some £130m last year. It is believed that the previous year’s EBITDA profit of £12m may also have been wiped out. Ideal World’s abortive move into US shopping channels and a failure to increase online revenues in the UK lead observers to believe that Blackstone will be lucky even to match the £78m that Inflexion paid for the business back in 2011.
Uncategorised
Blackstone to offload UK shopping channels
