Media company Zee Entertainment (Zee) on Monday organised an investor call for mutual funds to address concerns over the collapse of its merger with Sony Pictures Networks India (Culver Max Entertainment) in January.
The move came after mutual funds such as ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund (which held 7.25% in Zee at the end of the December 2023 quarter) pared their holding in the company in January following the merger failure. At the end of the December quarter, MFs held 32.5% in the company. ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund is said to have offloaded around 2.15% stake.
Zee chairman R Gopalan reiterated that the decision to call off the merger was a unilateral one by Sony and that Zee had remained committed to the deal all along. The decision to merge the operations of Sony and Zee was taken in December 2021. Sony terminated the deal on January 22 this year citing non-completion of closing conditions.
“Since 2020, Zee’s performance has been impacted due to industry-wide slowdown, transitory issues and management bandwidth constraints due to merger activities. A revival plan by the Zee management team is already being put into action to accelerate growth,” he said. This includes an 8-10% revenue growth and 18-20% Ebitda margins by FY26.
Gopalan also said the board would be closely monitoring the revival plan of the company and was committed to shareholder value.