AT&T has reached an agreement in principle to buy media group Time Warner for US$ 85.000 million, according to sources cited by Reuters, in a transaction that would offer the telecommunications company the control of channels such as HBO, CNN and movie studio Warner Bros, with titles such as Harry Potter series such as Game of Thrones.
The operation, which could be announced today, would be one of the largest in recent years in the sector, in a time in which telecommunications companies try to attach content to their network to get customers who leave packages of cable programming and are inclined to offers to streaming or sends over the Internet. The boards of both companies were gathered together to approve the operation, said The Wall Street Journal. The sale would be half in cash and half in shares.
AT&T, which offers mobile telephony services and broadband, have already starred in moves to become a powerhouse in the media, as the purchase of the operator of satellite television DirecTV last year for US$ 48.500 million. After that transaction, we became the largest company of pay TV in the united States and the second largest mobile operator.
to Acquire Time Warner will give AT&T premium content that you can offer your clients pay-TV, mobile and Internet. Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, has been trying to transform the phone into a giant media and entertainment. In fact, separately, both AT&T as Time Warner were seeking to respond to the demands of customers in see more movies and series online. For case, AT&T plans to launch a new service streaming TV called DirecTV Now, which will bring dozens of channels to the Internet. In the meantime, HBO, Time Warner, filed last year an online version of their service for those who do not want to pay the cable.
AT&T, a company that was born in 1885, would pay$ 110 for each share of Time Warner, what you say about the operation at US$ 85.000 million, sources said Reuters. If realized that would be the single largest transaction of the year, exceeding the purchase of Monsanto by Bayer for US$ 66.000 million.
shares of Time Warner closed Friday with a rise of almost 8 %, to$ 89,48. The AT&T decreased 3 % to US$ 37,49. Thus, the companies had a value of US$ 68.000 million and US$ 233.000 million, respectively. Time Warner has sales of US$ 28.000 million.
The chairman and ceo of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, resisted a takeover bid of 80,000 million dollars of 21st Century Fox in 2014.
the Wall Street Journal said Friday that Apple approached Time Warner a few months ago for a possible merger and that is now attentive to the conversations with AT&T. In fact, part of the concerns of the phone is that might be other potential competitors for Time Warner, such as Google, in addition to Apple.
The merger between AT&T and Time Warner would be the marriage more ambitious between content and distribution in the media industry and telecommunications since Comcast bought NBC UNiversal and will be thoroughly scrutinized by regulators, according to the agency Bloomberg Roger Entner, analyst at Recon Analytics. The new rules of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, the regulator) have restricted the growth of the carriers in the world of telecommunications and that led to incorporating other businesses like television and media, said the consultant.
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