Advertisement

Nielsen to go private after Evergreen, Brookfield acquisition deal

Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman Brian Sozzi discuss Evergreen and Brookfield's acquisition of Nielsen.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: All right, last mover here is Nielsen. Nielsen finally agreeing to a deal here. There's been talk about this deal, reports on a deal. For a couple of weeks, it had pushed back against the pricing on the deal. Now, indeed, Nielsen has agreed to go private.

A consortium is buying. The consortium includes Evergreen Coast Capital, which is an affiliate of Elliott, and Brookfield Asset Management. And the price, the total price on this is about $16 billion. That does include debt here. 28 bucks a share, as you can see there, which is 26 higher-- 26% higher than Nielsen's close yesterday. And you saw a moment ago that, indeed, the shares are spiking here, Sozz.

ADVERTISEMENT

BRIAN SOZZI: Yes, a source telling me that Nielsen CEO David Kenny, he will be, in fact, staying on here to run this business. Also interesting here, a week ago, this deal was essentially dead in the water. This consortium came out, offered, I believe, $25.40. The deal's really-- the negotiations really picked up the past week, I am told. And they both agreed to $28.

Now it's just a matter of can Nielsen make that pivot to better account for this streaming environment? They have struggled to make that transition. And of course, Julie, while I have you here, our producer, Pam, is really on this Topgolf thing, noting that for $300, you could have 12 kids go to Topgolf, two hours of Topgolf game play complementary kids' club available, and a kids' menu, Julie, with mini cheeseburgers. You can't beat that.

JULIE HYMAN: Are you getting a cut? Like, I'm just-- I'm totally baffled, everything about this.

BRIAN SOZZI: I'm a golfer. So full disclosure, I'm a golfer. And I wish golf was in my life when I was a kid. That's all from Uncle Sozz. That's all I have for you.

JULIE HYMAN: OK, all right, well, maybe you can convince your niece and nephew to go to Topgolf for some birthday parties. We're going to take a quick break.