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Charter Communications Inc. plans to buy Time Warner Cable Inc., clinching a deal made necessary by slowing growth in the U.S. cable industry -- and more expensive by last-minute competition from French billionaire Patrick Drahi.
Charter will pay $195.71 a share -- 14 percent above Time Warner Cable's May 22 close -- with options of $100 and $115 in cash and the remainder in its own stock, according to a statement Tuesday. Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company that Charter has previously agreed to buy, will also be merged into the combined entity.
It took Charter and its main shareholder John Malone more than a year to reach a deal with No. 2 Time Warner Cable after their January 2014 bid of $132.50-a-share was rejected as a "low-ball offer" and Comcast Corp. jumped in with a competing offer. Although Charter got another shot when regulatory scrutiny caused the Comcast deal to fall apart in April, talks were disrupted by Drahi's Altice SA, which also approached Time Warner Cable in the past weeks.
"The idea that Time Warner Cable and Charter are merging isn't a surprise, but the price raises some eyebrows," Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson in New York, said May 24 after Bloomberg News reported a deal was near. "Altice undoubtedly contributed to Charter having to pay such a steep price to close the deal."
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission - before the purchase was confirmed]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mendax on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:57AM
Comcast and Time Warner, two very evil companies, wanted to merge to become another Great Satan. Fortunately, the DOJ of the original Great Satan did something apparently honest and rational for a change and decided to step in, essentially killing the deal. Now, Charter and Time Warner want to create another incestuous corporate marriage and create a slightly less worrisome evil corporation.
I've never been a Time Warner or Comcast company but I have been a Charter cable and Internet customer before Wave bought up their business in my area. Let me say that Charter's customer service was borderline acceptable at the time I was their customer but the quality of their cable and Internet service was at times beyond awful, and it didn't get any better with Wave. The worst was a three-day Internet outage because of some failed hardware in a vault on my street. However, they were the only guys in town at the time with high-speed Internet service and so I was doomed to pay for their slow "high speed" Internet and awful analog cable service. So, I don't see how a merger of Charter and Time Warner will improve things.
Incidentally, we now have more competition here today. I subscribe to ATT's Uverse service and it's pretty decent for the most part and their customer service has been excellent. The Internet is fast and mostly reliable with little hiccups here and there but the kind we all expect. Wave is still here and I get some junk mail from them at least once a week. However, I won't ever patronize them again unless ATT's service gets a lot worse.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by githaron on Wednesday May 27 2015, @01:31PM
I actually have had very good experiences with Charter. The occassional outages were usually very short (few hours). They lent me a modem without charging me an equipment fee. Their prices were/are quite reasonable (~$45 after the special ran out). I got upload and download speeds that were faster than advertised. Every few years they would upgrade my connection without being asked and without charging me more. This last time I went from a 30Mb/s connection to a 100Mb/s connection overnight. If they had upload speeds that matched their download speeds, it would have been heaven. Unfortunately, I recently moved outside their service area.