Argentina’s Grupo Clarin Forecasts 18% Sales Growth In 2012
Felipe 
BUENOS AIRES (Dow Jones)–Argentina’s largest multi-media company Grupo Clarin SA (GCLA.BA) said Monday that it expects its sales to increase about 18% this year, well below last year’s growth rate.
Speaking on a conference call with analysts, Clarin investor relations officer Alfredo Marin also forecast 15% growth in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or ebitda.
While impressive at face value, those forecasts look far less rosy considering that most private sector economists say annual inflation is running between 20% and 25%. The heavily questioned national statistics agency puts inflation at just under 10%.
Clarin’s sales grew nearly 28% last year, while ebitda rose 10.5%.
Marin put capital expenditures at about $350 million in 2012, similar to last year.
The company’s shares traded on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange were unchanged at ARS10.00 on Monday, with a year-to-date gain of 12.4%.
Clarin could soon see the exit of investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) as a shareholder if the media company’s controlling owners exercise an option to buy the investment bank’s 22.1 million shares in Clarin for about $75.1 million. The option is scheduled to expire this week.
Clarin hasn’t received any notification from its controlling shareholders yet, Marin said.
«If we have a material [event] we are going to announce it,» he said.
Goldman Sachs owns 9.1% of Clarin, while nearly 71% is in the hands of the four controlling shareholders and 19.9% is traded on stock exchanges in Buenos Aires and London.
Goldman Sachs has been a Clarin shareholder since the company went public in 2007. At the time of the IPO, Clarin had a bright future thanks to its ownership of major newspapers, popular cable and broadcast television channels, and one of the country’s largest broadband internet providers.
Today, Clarin’s stock trades at about a third of its IPO price of ARS29.14 as President Cristina Kirchner puts unrelenting pressure on those media companies that are critical of her government.
Once on friendly terms, Clarin and Kirchner are now bitter enemies after the company turned against the administration during a farmers strike in 2008.
In 2009, Kirchner stripped Clarin of its lucrative rights to broadcast Argentina’s first division soccer league and used her control of Congress to pass a controversial media law that would force Clarin to sell key assets such as its broadband business. That law is currently tied up in the courts.
More recently, in December, Kirchner signed into law a bill that effectively allows the state to wrest control of Argentina’s leading newsprint producer, Papel Prensa SA (PREN1.BA), from Clarin and influential newspaper publisher La Nacion.
-By Ken Parks, Dow Jones Newswires; 54-11-4103-6740, ken.parks@dowjones.com
Source: http://online.wsj.com
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