Agora eyes Polish web portal Bankier.pl -Wood & Co
WARSAW, April 16 (Reuters) - Polish media group Agora AGOD.WA is considering acquiring Polish financial news portal Bankier.pl BAPL.WA, a Wood & Company analyst wrote in a morning note on Wednesday.
"(Agora is) looking closely at Bankier.pl financial portal as target," Wood & Company wrote in a report following a meeting with Agora's management.
"Sounded like there's a lot of interest in it and the price for this asset ... could exceed estimates of 130 million zlotys ($60.5 million)," the report added.
Bankier.pl has a market capitalisation of around $50 million. Its shares surged as much as 18.8 percent on Wednesday and by 1215 GMT were trading up 12.6 percent to 14.70 zlotys.
Agora, the publisher of Poland's leading daily, announced in February it was willing to spend, and even alter its dividend policy to ensure that the Internet and other faster-growing activities made up the majority of its revenues by 2011.
"We confirm that financial news outlets are one group of news outlets we are interested in," said Agora's spokeswoman Urszula Szwed-Strych. She declined to comment on Bankier.pl in particular.
Agora shares, which have declined 26 percent so far this year, were down 0.5 percent to 40.90 zlotys by 1218 GMT, underperforming Warsaw's large-cap WIG20 index .WIG20, which was down 0.3 percent.
Agora has a market capitalisation of around $1 billion. (Reporting by Piotr Bujnicki; writing by Marynia Kruk, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
