UK-based investor Unbiased Franchise Companions takes 3% stake in Common Music Group price $1.2bn+
A so-called ‘activist’ investor based mostly in London known as Unbiased Franchise Companions (IFP) has constructed a 3.01% stake in Common Music Group, the world’s largest music firm, in keeping with a submitting revealed by the Dutch monetary markets regulator, the AFM.
The submitting reveals that IFP held 55,155,646 odd shares in UMG as of final Monday (February 9), carrying equal capital curiosity and voting rights of 3.01%.
Based mostly on UMG’s closing share value of €19.73 on that date, the stake was price roughly €1.09 billion (USD $1.29bn).
As reported by Reuters, the holding makes IFP the sixth-largest shareholder in Common Music Group, in keeping with LSEG knowledge.
Based in 2009, Reuters famous that IFP describes its funding focus as concentrating on exceptionally high-quality firms whose aggressive benefit is supported by dominant intangible belongings. The agency has not publicly commented on its intentions concerning UMG.
IFP additionally holds a 5.37% stake in Vivendi and a 5.86% stake in British property platform Rightmove.
IFP additionally seems to be a big shareholder in Warner Music Group (see under), holding a 9.1% stake within the firm’s Class A typical inventory as of March 2025, in keeping with SEC filings, suggesting a broader guess on the music rights sector.
The Vivendi place is notable: Vivendi’s controlling shareholder, the Bolloré household, held an 18.5% stake in UMG and a 29.3% stake in Vivendi on the shut of 2024, in keeping with the Bolloré Group’s web site.
Vivendi, in flip, had a capital curiosity of 14.59% in UMG as of December 2024, although a portion of that was topic to a ahead sale and fairness swap, decreasing Vivendi’s internet financial publicity to roughly 10%.
The connection between these entities is at the moment the topic of a high-profile authorized battle in France.
IFP’s arrival on UMG’s shareholder register comes throughout a interval of upheaval among the many firm’s main buyers.
In March final 12 months, Invoice Ackman’s Pershing Sq. raised roughly $1.4 billion from the sale of round 50 million UMG shares — a 2.7% stake — at €26.60 per share, decreasing its holding to roughly 4.8%. That sale adopted Pershing’s distribution of an extra 47 million shares (2.6% of UMG) to its PSVII fund buyers in January 2025.
Ackman subsequently resigned from UMG’s board in Could.
In July, Cyrille Bolloré — son of French media mogul Vincent Bolloré, and Chairman and CEO of the Bolloré Group — stepped down from UMG’s board to give attention to the Bolloré Group’s combat with France’s AMF, which had ordered the group to make a compulsory tender supply for Vivendi shares it doesn’t personal.
Nonetheless, in late November, France’s highest court docket, the Cour de Cassation, overturned the Paris Courtroom of Attraction ruling that had discovered Vincent Bolloré to be in de facto management of Vivendi — referring the query of management again to a freshly composed panel of the Courtroom of Attraction.
The AMF has stated it can not rule once more on the obligatory tender supply till the brand new Courtroom of Attraction choice is handed down.
UMG additionally filed a confidential draft registration assertion with the US Securities and Alternate Fee in July for a proposed secondary itemizing on a US inventory change, however the timing of that itemizing stays unsure.
Whereas the Tencent-led consortium’s roughly 20% stake has remained regular by way of this era, UMG’s share value has declined roughly 10% year-to-date in 2026, and is down round 30% over the previous 12 months.
That decline has come regardless of continued development in UMG’s underlying enterprise.
The corporate’s most up-to-date quarterly outcomes confirmed Q3 2025 revenues of €3.02 billion, up 10.2% YoY at fixed forex, with adjusted EBITDA of €664 million — a margin of twenty-two%.
UMG is because of report its This fall and full-year 2025 outcomes on March 5.
In an investor presentation revealed on February 11 — two days after IFP’s submitting date — Pershing Sq. made a bullish case for UMG, describing the corporate as “a high-quality, capital-light, quickly rising royalty on better music consumption”.
Pershing argued that UMG’s development is ready to speed up, pushed by ‘Streaming 2.0’ offers incorporating wholesale value will increase that ought to result in greater subscription income development, and new companions and product tiers that ought to enable for higher buyer segmentation.
On AI, Pershing stated UMG is starting to monetize the know-how by partnering with new digital service suppliers creating instruments for music discovery and creation, and argued that AI will decrease the prices of making music and permit UMG to function extra effectively.
Regardless of that optimism, Pershing famous that UMG trades at its lowest-ever valuation — 18x earnings, or 17x excluding its possession stake in Spotify — citing the overhang created by uncertainty across the Bolloré state of affairs and UMG’s delayed US itemizing as key components miserable the share value.
“Given its market place and decades-long runway for sustained earnings development, we imagine UMG’s present valuation represents a really substantial low cost to its intrinsic worth,” Pershing concluded.
MBW reached out to Common Music Group for remark.Music Enterprise Worldwide
