The Chief Executive Officer of Orange SA, Stephane Richard, said that the company is to consider a strategic partnership with a landline or cable provider as a part of its plan do expand its reach into broadband and TV services in the U.K.
Stephane Richard said in an interview, cited by Bloomberg: “Convergence often means M&A, but it doesn’t have to. The U.K. market will go toward convergence just like all the other markets, there’s no reason it should be an exception.”
France-based Orange is negotiating with Microsoft Corp., which has already expressed its interest in acquiring a minority stake in the company. The Chief Executive Officer of the company stated that an eventual collaboration might involve sharing infrastructure or even changing the capital structure of its venture in the U.K., called EE.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of the company, Orange is ready to allow an outsider to take control of Dailymotion, considering the fact that the French company is bringing a new life to its endeavour to expand its video streaming website.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Richard said: “Keeping control of Dailymotion is not something I’m religious about. What I want is to make sure we select the best future business project with a possible co-investor.”
Orange has been seeking partners in order to help it expand Dailymotion for more than a year now. The company is trying to make a worthy rival of YouTube, which is currently owned by Google Inc. Last year Orange was reported to have approached selling a majority stake in Dailymotion to Yahoo, but the transaction faltered because of the interference of the then-industry minister Arnaud Montebourg.
Orange SA added 3.87% to trade at €13.56 per share as of 13:18 GMT, marking a one-year increase of 43.93%. The company is valued at €34.57 billion. According to the Financial Times, the 21 analysts offering 12-month price targets for Orange SA have a median target of €12.20, with a high estimate of €14.50 and a low estimate of €10.00. The median estimate represents a -6.51% decrease from the last price of €13.05.
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