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Why I have been buying shares in Avanti Screenmedia

I have received countless emails about Avanti, about their recent cash flow crisis and of course about their (spectacular) share price fall.

I don’t believe that they are “dead in the water” as some people have speculated – in fact I believe that a newly slimmed down Avanti (since the de-merger of their Satellite operations) and with a CEO at the head of the business who has a great media background will demonstrate that they are incredibly under valued.

As I have mentioned previously, one of the jewels that Avanti Screenmedia have up their sleeve is their deal with Setanta Sports in pubs, clubs and bars.

In many ways this is actually NOT a (true)) Digital Signage or even a traditional out of home ‘play’ – I would compare the agreement that they have with Setanta (and the venues) and the deals that their sales people are doing at the moment – more along the lines of Sky’s Pub TV offering (i.e more of a traditional television sale).

I’m not saying that the poster specialists and the out of home folks like Posterscope would not be interested in doing advertising on the network (and they have by all accounts) but the offer is much more of a TV proposition than anything else.

My understanding is that Avanti’s media sales folks have been working overtime; getting agreements in place for the start of the new UK Football Season (which kicked off last Saturday).

So far Avanti have booked 30 brands; the main sectors so far being Drinks, Automotive, Entertainment and Government

The Avanti / Setanta ‘network’ is 47,000 venues, a 1.8 million per week footfall and an average dwell time of 97 minutes.

The advertising revenues from a network of that size will be quite considerable.

If you are in the UK you can not have failed to see Setanta’s own TV advertisements promoting their brand and services on (mainly terrestrial) television channels. This all helps with sales of course.

See http://www.setanta.com/uk [1]