The biggest outdoor media company in Australia, oOh! Media, could be up for sale or going public as early as late this year, with advisers just appointed by its private equity owners.

Champ Private Equity, which owns 80 per cent of oOh!, has reportedly hired Macquarie Group to organise a potential $500m sale or IPO for late 2014 or early 2015 when market conditions would be most favourable.

The media company has a 35 per cent market share in out-of-home advertising with strong presence in shopping centre, transport and roadside signs, and thousands of billboards around the country, including more than 11,000 printed billboards and retail faces.

oOh! prints with Priority Printing Solutions, Billboard Media, Sumo Visual Group, and Opus subsidiary Cactus Imaging, but has made significant forays into digital recently – such as Sydney Airport and the all-digital Emporium shopping centre – with it making up 25 per cent of its revenue, more than twice the industry average.

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oOh! Media chief executive Brendan Cook, who in May predicted the out-of-home industry could grow its market share from 4.8 to 6 per cent over the next few years, told ProPrint a sale or float was always going to happen under private equity ownership.

“Private equity ownerships usually have a three to five year timeline and we will be coming up on three years soon so it is standard to start thinking about it now,” he says.

“We are focused on the business and have a significantly growing position and revenue, and are making use of a lot of new technology.

Cook would not give a preference between a sale and IPO, saying “we will move through the options slowly and deliberately and assess which is the best way to go.”

The company was bought in 2012 for about $200m and merged with Eye Corp which Champ bought for $110m. It had an EBITA of $40-50m in FY2014.

Potential bidders include rival outdoor firms Adshel and APN Outdoor, which would be a major industry consolidation move, while Channel Nine is said to be interested so it could use the billboard network to promote its TV shows and rent to other advertisers.

APN Outdoor declined to comment on its competitors and Adshel has not yet returned requests for comment.

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The Australia Financial Review says Champ is understood to be eyeing other potential outdoor acquisitions to merge into oOh! before it is sold, making it a more attractive buy.

Cook says the company is always looking at acquisitions but would not say if anything was in negotiations at present.

“We have done 27 acquisitions in 12 years and a lot of opportunities come in front of us every day. If something interesting comes up we will have a sniff at it,” he says.

Fellow private equity-owned APN Outdoor, which was bought by Quadrant Private Equity from APN last year, is also expected to be up for sale in the near future, leading some to believe it might be best for oOh! to get in first so it has more control of the price.

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