Liberty Global said it will introduce a new tracking stock for its Latin American operations, splitting trading of its European cable operations and Latin American and Caribbean media businesses.
Making up the new LiLAC Group will be Liberty Global's 100 percent interest in VTR GlobalCom SpA and VTR Wireless SpA, as well as its 60 percent interest in Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico LLC.
"The creation of a tracking stock will highlight the value of our well-positioned operations in Latin America and the Caribbean," said Mike Fries, Liberty Global CEO, in a statement. "This structure will enable us to retain the advantages of doing business as a single company, including the benefits of being able to leverage the expertise of our broader management team, our technology development program and our overall economies of scale. At the same time, we will be creating 'pure-play' European and Latin American equities that we believe will be attractive to investors."
Liberty Global expects that the process to create and distribute the tracking shares will take approximately five months to complete.
The tracking stock structure is a hallmark of Liberty Media impresario John Malone, who earlier in October completed the split of Liberty Interactive into two separate tracking stocks. Liberty Media also plans to spin its 26 percent interest in Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) into the Liberty Broadband tracker next month.
Liberty Global is the largest cable operator in Europe with about 23 million subscribers. It has approximately 1.3 million customers in Chile and another 276,000 in Puerto Rico.
Related links:
Liberty Global's Fries: 'Netflix taught all of us a great lesson'
Liberty Global CEO: Netflix has 'no shot'
Netflix in talks with Belgian operators for new distribution deal
Comcast, Liberty Global agree to international Wi-Fi roaming