UTV Media, the listed company that recently launched a television service in the Irish market, has confirmed it is exploring a sale of its portfolio of 13 local radio stations in England and Wales.

The Belfast-headquartered company, which also owns eight radio stations in the Republic, including Q102 and FM104 in Dublin, issued a statement to the stock exchange saying it was “assessing its options” for the British stations.

This “may or may not lead to the disposal of some or all of these stations”, it said. UTV said any potential sale would not include TalkSport, its national sports-focused radio offering in Britain, or any of its Irish stations. British media speculated the stations could be worth more than £20 million (€25.6 million).

An obvious potential bidder is Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp, which entered the British radio market last year with the €45-million purchase of eight local stations from Global Radio. These included stations in Wales, England and Scotland, with combined weekly audiences of 2.8 million.

Communicorp is thought to have been keen to enter the UK market for several years but was held back by a lack of available assets. A spokesman for Mr O’Brien could not be reached for comment.

Other possible bidders would include Bauer Media, one of the largest local radio groups behind Global, and Orion Media, which owns several stations in the British midlands. The British assets that may be put up for sale by UTV include stations Pulse 1 and Pulse 2 in Yorkshire, Swansea Sound in Wales and Peak FM in Derbyshire.

UTV says its British local radio stations attract 1.2 million weekly listeners and recently grew market share by 5 per cent and revenues by 3 per cent. Revenues in its British radio division for the first half of 2014 grew by 20 per cent to £28.5 million, while operating profits more than doubled to more than £6 million. Much of this growth would have been driven by TalkSport, however.

Company shares rose on the London Stock Exchange by close to 9 per cent.