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AUSSIE COMPANY’S $1 BILLION POT OF F1 GOLD

Aussie companies $1 Billion pot of F1 gold - Photo: Suttons

By Bruce Williams

Aussie companies $1 Billion pot of F1 gold - Photo: Suttons

Aussie companies $1 Billion pot of F1 gold – Photo: Suttons

A hush-hush Australian company can be revealed as being close to the biggest shareholder in Formula 1, with a stake in the sport’s American owner Liberty Media that could be worth as much as $1 billion.

By GEOFFREY HARRIS

A Sydney-based investments company – revealed in Auto Action issue 1795, out now – has been building the stake since early 2018 – a year after Liberty took control of F1 from Bernie Ecclestone and CVC Capital Partners.

At Liberty’s peak price on America’s Nasdaq stock market the 17 million shares the firm now owns would have been worth A$1.15 billion.

However, despite a big recovery from the market crash that came with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, the price at which the stock has traded recently – around US$35.50 a share – has still been about 27.5 per cent below its peak.

Its holding was smaller at the time of the February-March crash, but it bought about three million shares in the downturn and at the end of last week its investment in Liberty was worth about US$606 million – more than A$830 million. It owns 8.4 per cent of the F1 company. The only bigger shareholder in Liberty is US investment giant Vanguard Group at 8.69 per cent.

While Ecclestone made F1 a huge money-spinner in almost 40 years at the helm, the rivers of gold dried up for Liberty in the first half of this year with the season postponed by the pandemic.

Its revenue in the June quarter, without grand prix race fees and TV rights income, was only US$24 million compared with US$620 million a year earlier.

However, its financials will be rebounding now, with 17 GPs in the second half of the year.

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