Comcast on Thursday confirmed plans to acquire Time Warner Cable in a stock deal valued at $45.2 billion. The deal has already been approved by the boards of directors of both companies. Pending regulatory approval, the merger would happen by the end of the year. Comcast:
The agreement is a friendly, stock-for-stock transaction in which Comcast will acquire 100 percent of Time Warner Cable’s 284.9 million shares outstanding for shares of CMCSA amounting to approximately $45.2 billion in equity value.
Comcast and Time Warner are already the top two cable companies in the US, and combined they'll have a total customer base of more than 30 million, after Comcast sloughs off about 3 million customers to other competitors. The company isn't expecting a regulatory hurdle - it points out in its press release that its total number of subscribers in the US after the merger will be about the same percentage as it was after Comcast acquired AT&T Broadband in 2002 and Adelphia in 2006.
Are you a Time Warner Cable or Comcast subscriber? What do you think of this planned merger - will this be good for customers or bad? Sound off in the comments.
