Italian biz newspaper plans to go public

Spurred by higher values for business media properties such as The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, Italy’s largest business newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, will file an application to list its shares in the next two weeks, according to a story in the Financial Times.

Emily Backus and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson wrote, “A source close to Il Sole 24 Ore, which is wholly owned by Confindustria, Italy’s main business lobby group, said the company was aiming to make its market debut in November, putting a 32.5 per cent stake on the block.

“Il Sole 24 Ore is widely regarded in Italy as the business paper of record, and is among Europe’s largest business papers, with a daily circulation of 347,000 copies and an estimated 1.2m readers. Although it has seen little recent growth in circulation, it has boosted advertising revenues.

“The company was expected to announce a 27 per cent rise in gross profits (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) for the first half of the year at a board meeting Monday night. Ebitda for the first half of 2007 was €56m ($71.5m) on total revenues of €307m, versus an ebitda of €44m on revenues of €274m last year.”

Read more here.