Image credit: Source: Catena Media regulatory disclosures and Q2 2026 earnings call. Never imply stock depicts the actual event.
Catena Media said on September 9 that holders of its perpetual hybrid bonds tendered just SEK 12.5 million of the notes into a buyback priced at 20 percent of face value, a small slice of the total outstanding, with settlement due September 16. Chief financial officer Michael Gerrow had told investors five weeks earlier, on the company's second-quarter earnings call, that Catena has "no plans to initiate interest payments anytime for the foreseeable future" on the same securities, a position the company has not walked back since.
The hybrid bonds carry a nominal value of EUR 43.7 million and had built up EUR 7.0 million in unpaid, deferred interest as of July 10, Gerrow told analysts, a sum growing by roughly EUR 1.5 million to EUR 1.6 million every quarter with no date set for it to stop. Catena has deferred every coupon since July 2025.
The buyback lands five weeks after Catena reported a 1 percent revenue decline and a nearly halved EBITDA margin for the same quarter, a result the company pinned on organic-search volatility. That story got the attention. The capital structure sitting underneath it has had far less: Catena carries no bank debt after repaying its senior bond in 2025, but it is now functionally walking away from a chunk of the subordinated capital it raised during its growth years, without a formal default.
Catena Media's hybrid bonds price at 20 cents on the euro
The securities, listed under ticker CATME HO1 with ISIN SE0014262192, are structured as hybrid capital securities: subordinated, perpetual instruments that rank behind ordinary creditors but ahead of shareholders, carrying no maturity date, no fixed obligation to ever repay principal, and a contractual right for the issuer to defer interest indefinitely. Companies use the structure to raise capital that accounting treats partly like equity, without diluting existing shareholders the way a new share issue would. Catena issued this batch in July 2020, with a first call date five years later, in July 2025, the same month deferral began. Six years on, the flexibility that made the instrument attractive to issue is the same flexibility Catena is now using to avoid paying it back.
That structure is exactly what Gerrow cited when he explained the tender price on the earnings call. "The offer simply opens a window for those who prefer to have cash today," he said. "The price reflects characteristics of the instrument. It is perpetual. It has no maturity date, and there's no fixed payment obligation on the company."
Catena flagged its intention to launch the buyback on August 11, the same day it published the weak Q2 results. The formal offer opened August 21 and expired September 4 at 15:00 CEST, priced at SEK 20 for every SEK 100 of nominal value, with no accrued or deferred interest paid on top. ABG Sundal Collier acted as dealer manager. When the results came in on September 9, holders had tendered SEK 12,504,000 of nominal value for a total cash payment of SEK 2,500,800, a small fraction of the total outstanding. Settlement is set for September 16.
The thin take-up is itself informative. Most holders who could crystallize an exit at 20 cents on the euro chose not to. Some may have already marked the position near zero and see no upside in locking in the loss on paper. Others may be waiting on the chance, however distant, that Catena resumes payments. Either way, the bulk of the EUR 43.7 million in hybrid bonds is still out there, still not being paid, and still accumulating interest Catena has said it does not intend to hand over.
The interest nobody plans to pay
The deferral is contractual, not a default. Because the securities are structured as equity-like perpetuals under the terms Catena issued, skipping a coupon breaches nothing. Gerrow made that point directly to an analyst on the first-quarter call who asked when payments might restart: "No, we've not set a fixed timeline... we're expecting to continue deferring this and to direct available capital towards technology and other strategic priorities." By that April 10 call, deferred interest stood at EUR 5.4 million. Three months later it was EUR 7.0 million, tracking the same pace.
Catena ended June with EUR 13 million in cash, a smaller number than the interest bill already sitting unpaid on its hybrid bonds. The two figures aren't directly comparable, since deferred interest isn't payable on demand and the cash is working capital for a business still generating revenue. But the gap illustrates the scale of what a "for the foreseeable future" deferral actually means here: the unpaid claim is now worth more than half a year of the company's total quarterly revenue, and it keeps compounding.
A small tender, a bigger signal
In cash terms, the buyback was trivial. SEK 2.5 million against a quarter's EUR 9.5 million in revenue barely registers on the balance sheet. But the price is the real information, not the size. A company voluntarily offering to repurchase its own subordinated capital at an 80 percent discount, in an instrument thin enough that Catena is effectively the only buyer willing to make a market in it, is about as close to a real, current valuation as this security will get. Secondary trading in a small perpetual hybrid like this one is sparse to nonexistent between issuer-run tenders.
That 20-cent print is a more honest number than anything sitting at par on Catena's balance sheet. It says the market, or at least the company setting the market, views the bulk of that EUR 43.7 million as very unlikely to come back to holders in full, on any timeline Catena is willing to put a date on.
Gentoo Media is still shopping for the debt Catena wrote off
Set against Catena, Gentoo Media is running the opposite problem with the same root cause. Gentoo cut its full-year guidance on August 26 and is still negotiating a refinancing it first floated in February, when it lined up meetings for a EUR 120 million bond. Seven months on, the company says the board is now "evaluating a range of refinancing alternatives, including a new bond and private debt structures," with an update promised no later than October 1.
Catena has already told its subordinated holders they will not be made whole and is buying pieces of that debt back at a discount from a position of having decided. Gentoo, by contrast, is trying to persuade new lenders to extend fresh credit to a business that just admitted its own full-year targets were too optimistic. Both companies raised capital during the affiliate sector's growth years on terms that assumed the growth would keep compounding. Both are now working through what happens when it doesn't, on opposite sides of the same negotiating table.
Better Collective and Grandstand are buying the opposite trade
The other two bellwethers show what the alternative looks like. Better Collective's second quarter revenue rose 9 percent to EUR 89 million and EBITDA rose 20 percent to EUR 27 million, funding a EUR 319 million three-year credit facility plus a EUR 50 million M&A line, a stated ceiling of net debt below three times EBITDA, and a EUR 40 million annual share buyback for 2026, according to the company's results and comments reported by TipRanks. Operating cash flow before special items rose 59 percent to EUR 30 million, a cash conversion rate of 111 percent.
Grandstand, the renamed Gambling.com Group, is carrying real debt of its own: $122.3 million outstanding against $8.8 million of cash at the end of June, according to its SEC filing. But it is retiring that debt from strength, not distress, prepaying deferred consideration tied to its OddsJam acquisition ahead of schedule, most recently settling 30 percent of a 2026 earn-out at roughly a 9 percent discount rather than paying it in full at maturity. Both companies are shrinking obligations. Neither is doing it by telling a class of its own capital providers not to expect payment.
The buyback price is the real credit rating
No agency rates Catena's hybrid bonds. The company just set its own price for them in a competitive tender, and most holders who could take that price walked away instead. That split matters beyond Catena's own balance sheet. Operators weighing revenue-share commitments against affiliate partners, and investors sizing up which listed affiliates can fund the next stretch of the industry's traffic transition versus which are still working through the last one, now have a data point Catena itself supplied: most of its EUR 43.7 million in hybrid bonds will not be repaid at par on any timeline the company is willing to name. Anyone still holding the position is making a bet Catena has publicly declined to back.
Related reading: Catena Media's search headwinds and marketplace pivot | Gentoo Media cuts guidance as refinancing drags on | Betting affiliates split between focus and scale | Grandstand rebrand retires the Gambling.com Group name