Kantar Owners 'Considering Break-Up / Sale'

Kantar's owners, WPP and Bain Capital, are considering selling off the Worldpanel / Numerator division for more than £5bn ($6.5bn), or breaking up and selling the group more generally, according to two separate reports.

Bain Capital owns 60% of the insight and analytics giant, while former parent WPP has retained a 40% stake. At the weekend Sky News cited unnamed 'banking sources' saying the price for Worldpanel could be well over £5bn, but that the move had not been finalised and bankers had not been appointed to handle an auction should it occur. A separate report in the Financial Times, also based on unnamed sources, said Kantar may be broken up and sold, an option also mentioned in the Sky article.

Bain Capital and WPP, who were previously said to be considering an IPO for the insights group, have declined to comment on the reports, and Kantar gave DRNO the same answer today.

A Worldpanel sale would leave Kantar's core brand consultancy business as a standalone entity. In January the group's audience measurement division Kantar Media was sold to London-based alternative investment firm H.I.G. Capital for around $1 billion, while policy evidence and advisory business Kantar Public was sold in 2022 to private equity firm Trilantic Europe, and rebranded as Verian Group in 2023.

The latest news follows a challenging 2024 for WPP, which reported slight declines in revenue and headline profit two weeks ago.

The Bain Capital purchase in late 2019 valued the whole of Kantar at around £3.2bn (then $4bn), so the suggested price for Worldpanel would represent a substantial rise in value - however the division has made acquisitions since then, in particular that of Chicago-based consumer and market intelligence company Numerator, for which it paid $1.5bn, and which is currently being merged with Worldpanel under Numerator's name and CEO.

Web sites: www.wpp.com , www.kantar.com , www.kantarworldpanel.com and www.baincapital.com .