AT&T would be very close to a deal for a minority stake in DirecTV.
Both Bloomberg and CNBC sources quoted as saying AT&T is about to sign a deal with private equity firm TPG for $ 15 million. The news follows a message from the New York Post in December that AT&T engaged TPG over a deal after previous offers fell short of AT & T’s expectations. AT&T bought DirecTV for $ 49 billion in 2015, and it’s possible that the company hoped to scrape that back. But DirecTV has been too bleeding customers for years, so there is.
An AT&T spokesperson declined to comment.
Citing sources, CNBC reported that the companies could announce the deal as early as this week. The outlet too reported that despite AT & T’s, AT&T CEO John Stankey had not wanted to completely sell the company’s problem child astronomical debt that is currently around $ 150 billion.
AT&T has also invested heavily in its great HBO Max experiment, one strange mishmash from licensed content, HBO content, Max originals and then all the WarnerMedia stuff shuffled into the service too. The service is AT & T’s answer to Netflix and Disney +, although those services’ active subscriptions continue to grow 200 million and 95 million subscriptions, while HBO Max reported most recently it had 17.17 million “activated” users. Possibly throw all of his 2021 Warner Bros. movies on the service will help.
It is of course possible that the deal will not go through. But maybe AT&T can finally turn its decayed satellite business into someone else’s problem.
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