Tiscali offloads Swedish unit to Spray Network

Europe’s second largest ISP Tiscali says that it is selling its Swedish unit to Spray Networks, part of Lycos Europe, for EUR13 million. In what is the Italian company’s fourth asset sale in less than three weeks, Tiscali will raise EUR71 million of the EUR250 million it needs to find by the end of 2005 to redeem debt and focus on profitability. Tiscali, which is concentrating its strategic efforts on the UK, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands, is coming under increasing scrutiny from the markets over its impending debt obligations and during the course of 2004 its market value has halved. The company reported a profit of EUR24.3 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation in the second quarter, but is still burning cash.