Univision has sold a majority stake to a group of investors, ending the Spanish-language broadcaster’s protracted and flailing sales process.
The TV company known for dramas like “La Reina Soy Yo” has agreed to sell a 64 percent stake to a group of investors including private equity firm Searchlight Capital Partners and ex-Viacom finance chief Wade Davis, it said on Tuesday.
Davis will become the company’s new chief executive after the deal closes later this year. In an interview with The Journal, Davis said his plans for the company include developing a direct-to-consumer streaming service that could feature the company’s entertainment, sports and news programming. He didn’t say whether the service will be supported by user fees or ads.
Mexican media company Grupo Televisa will retain a 36 percent stake in the company. Televisa’s licensing deal with Univision, which gives it exclusive access to the world’s largest Spanish-language video library, won’t expire unless Televisa sells a meaningful portion of its stake, the companies said.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal said the deal values Univision at less than $10 billion, including debt, citing anonymous sources. That’s less than the Spanish-language giant had been expecting when it put itself on the block in August of 2019.
As The Post reported at the time, the debt-laden company had been looking for “north of $10 billion” as profits and revenues plunged amid growing competition from streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.
But the sales process was rocky and saw potential bidders Hemisphere Media Group and Liberty Global, an investment arm of John Malone’s Liberty Media, drop out at the last minute amid allegations of a “conflict of interest,” a source with knowledge of the situation told The Post.
The source pointed to the fact that Hemisphere Chairman Peter Kern also served as a special adviser to Univision CEO Vince Sadusky, and said there was buzz of a lawsuit by other interested bidders if the group did not step aside.
Neither Univision nor Kern commented.
The sale ends more than a decade under Unvision’s current ownership, which includes billionaire Haim Saban’s Saban Capital Group and private equity firms Providence Equity Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners, TPG and Thomas H. Lee Partners.
In 2007, the group bought Univision in a leveraged buyout valued at $13.7 billion including debt.
Searchlight, which was founded in 2010, invested in such Spanish-language media as Hemisphere Media in 2016 and Liberty Latin America, a telecommunications firm affiliated with Malone, in 2018.
