On Tuesday 5 October, the Rai board of directors approved the issue of a new one bond worth 300 million to be issued by the end of the year. This is the second financial operation of this kind that the public broadcasting company launches after the previous one carried out by Luigi Gubitosi in May 2015 for a value of 350 million. At the time, this operation was considered a great success and with an expected coupon of 1,5% it immediately obtained a significant interest from investors, who made requests exceeding four times the initial total value, reaching over one billion and 800 million euros. The issue was aimed on the one hand at lightening the debt weighed down by substantial interest rates (over 4%) and, on the other hand, at tackling the problems of restructuring the Company's real estate assets with a substantial share of liquidity.
The 2015 bond transaction followed by one year the listing of RaiWay, the company that owns the Rai signal transmission networks, which also brought a substantial portion of profits into the Viale Mazzini coffers against the sale of a substantial portion, the 30% of his assets.
Of the previous transactions, all the details, premises and intended use of the bonds collected on the market were known, while instead of this current one, at the moment, we only know what is reported by the ADN agency which reads that it is a question of "a five-year bond loan" and that "the specific rate for the next Rai bond will be decided by the market at the time of issue". Now it must be said that the public radio and television company is facing a very delicate economic and financial crossroads. In recent weeks, the MISE has "stamped" the 2018-21 Business Plan with which it would like to ferry Rai towards that "media company" which it has been debating for some time. This Plan (moreover still awaiting the non-binding validation by the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission which could express "directions" that are not yet very clear) rests on an architecture of resources worth around 500 million, divided between those dedicated to the development of strategic initiatives for 370 million (including the obligations under the service contract: English-language and institutional channels) and resources for the financing of strategic initiatives for approximately 130 million. As we have often written on FIRSTonline, Rai is required to do a lot in the face of resources that tend to be stable in terms of license fees and declining in terms of advertising.
With these premises, it is not at all clear, so far, what the purposes of the Rai 2019 bond are. On the one hand, as some sources we questioned claim, the new resources will have to be used to "pay off" the previous loan and “keep the credit line open”; others argue instead that they could be destined to support the fragility of the industrial plan in a more robust way in the face of further expense charges that are not yet fully foreseeable both in terms of technological compliance and in terms of editorial commitments.
Finally, all of this is part of a very important political and economic "bet": the one contained in the program of the current government, which provides, in point 11, for the reform of the entire telecommunications system and therefore the redefinition of the weight of the individual sectors, of the market shares, of the powerful innovations that occurred from the previous Gasparri Law of 2004 and from the subsequent Romani Decree of 2007 to the present day with the rampant OTT. In the meantime, a storm has been unleashed on the audiovisual market with still unpredictable results and the heart of the competition is all in the economic resources that the various contenders will be able to employ.
