Comscore Agrees New Credit, Amends Deal with Charter

Audience measurement firm Comscore has entered into a new $60 million credit facility agreement, and has amended its Data License Agreement with broadband and cable company Charter Communications.

Four years ago Comscore received funds from Charter and two other investors totalling $204m, in exchange for shares of convertible preferred stock - this was used to retire existing debt and to improve the firm's financial flexibility and liquidity. As part of the transaction, Charter received a ten-year license to provide Comscore with access to deidentified data sets and rights.

This week the Data License Agreement has been amended to reduce the amount of cash fees by some $35m, and to expand Comscore's rights to data.

In November, Comscore reported third quarter revenue of $88.5m, down 2.7% from a year previously, and reported a net loss of $60.6m due to a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $63.0m - the latter followed a review of its declining stock price and market capitalization. CEO Jon Carpenter (pictured) said however that the firm had taken 'meaningful steps forward' in its cross-platform business and was positioning itself to become 'the industry's leading source for cross-platform audience planning and measurement'.

Comscore has endured almost ten years of share price decline since August 2015 when it topped out at over $64. Problems began with accounting errors and misstatement, but have since centred around a continuing struggle to make a profit, combined with slight revenue decline / stagnation over time. Just over a year ago the company implemented a 1-for-20 reverse split of its issued and outstanding common stock after a prolonged period below the Nasdaq's minimum $1 requirement: factoring this in, the stock has lost around 99.5% of its value, despite the company being often cited as one of the new wave of challengers to Nielsen. Comscore's current market cap is around $30m - roughly equivalent to one month of its revenue - while Nielsen was sold some two and a half years ago for $16bn.

Web site: www.comscore.com .