TVN Drops to 1-Month Low as Erste Cuts Polish Broadcaster

TVN SA (TVN), Poland’s second-biggest television group, fell to the lowest level in almost a month as Erste Group Bank AG downgraded the stock to reduce from hold, citing worsening prospects for the local ad market.

The stock declined as much as 2 percent and traded 1.3 percent lower at 9.08 zloty as of 12:42 p.m. in Warsaw, the lowest level since Jan. 9. Turnover amounted to 12 percent of the three-month daily average, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“TVN is currently traded with a 15-21 percent premium to its peers,” Vaclav Kminek, a Prague-based analyst at Erste, said in a research note today. As the broadcaster sold its majority stake in Web portal Onet.pl last year it “is now a pure free-to-air player, highly dependent on the TV advertising market and such a premium is not justifiable.”

The Polish ad market will shrink 4.8 percent this year “with risks on the downside” while the cost cutting program, started by the company in the third quarter of 2012 “is already priced in,” according to Kminek.

Erste increased its share-price estimate for the stock to 9 zloty from 7.5 zloty.

To contact the reporter on this story: Piotr Bujnicki in Warsaw at pbujnicki@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Wojciech Moskwa at wmoskwa@bloomberg.net