Prime buys 15% of digital media firm destra Tim Addington
Regional television and radio operator Prime Television has paid $10.4 million for a 15% stake in digital media business destra.
Prime has 13 TV stations around Australia and its stake in destra comes after it announced plans to leverage its existing assets into new media opportunities.
Prime will make a $7.3 million upfront investment to buy 28 million destra shares at 26 cents, giving it a 13% stake. It will acquire a further 12 million shares at 26 cents once destra’s acquisition of independent film and DVD distributor Magna Pacific Holdings has been completed. Warwick Syphers, CEO of Prime will join the destra board.
Paul Ramsay, chairman of Prime said: “We believe that destra have developed a unique and highly attractive business model in the digital marketplace which will represent an important component of Prime’s digital strategy in the future. Prime’s strong capability in the mass free to air distribution of TV, radio, and progressively online content, is highly complementary with destra’s core capability in licensing, producing and building communities around such content.”
Carl Olsen, destra’s chairman, added: “The opportunities that we have already identified with Prime are substantial and therefore we are excited about developing these initiatives further. In addition, the capital injection by Prime will provide destra with financial flexibility in respect of its current and future funding requirements such as the proposed acquisition of Magna Pacific and other potential bolt-on acquisitions.”
Meanwhile BlueFreeway, which bought destra’s backend hosting business for $20 million last year, has announced it is changing its name. destra Hosting will now be known as BlueCentral.
