United Business Media is on the slide despite a positive note from Citigroup, which speculated on the possible sale of its information subsidiary PRNewswire.

Citi said that UBM had not said it wanted to sell the business, which could be worth around £380m, but noted that the company had recently been expanding its events division through acquisition, and would need to find additional funding for this strategy to continue. It said:

We suggest that UBM could sell PRNewswire to fund its expansion in events. We have argued that PRNewswire’s core third party text distribution business faces structural challenges in a world where information is increasingly accessible. While we agree that PRNewswire helps to push a message to a targeted audience, in a world where there is also increasing noise, our concern centres on the per word, rather than subscription, business model. Over time, customers may issue shorter press releases and direct readers to more information on their own websites.

So who might buy PRNewswire? Citi said:

We note that Thomson Reuters is moving towards providing a full range of corporate services (financial and communications tools) and the Hugin acquisition (European online newswire) in September 2009 is evidence of its aspiration to move into newswires. Private equity could also be interested in the asset, as could PRN’s major competitor in its core US market, Business Wire.

Citi upgraded UBM from sell to hold, but in a falling market its shares are down 8.5p to 702p.

Elsewhere in its 88 page note on the media, Citi issued sell notes on both Trinity Mirror, down 4.25p at 84.5p, and Johnston Press, up 0.25p to 11p, on the basis of a poor outlook for regional newspapers, falling advertising volumes and the fact that M&A activity - while possible - was not probable.

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