Latest site posts:
- Investing Your First $500: A Guide to Making Your First Investment Choice a Success
- Lots of Savings Opportunities for Your Online Shopping in the Coming Days
- Is it Beneficial for Military Members to Open a Roth IRA?
- Charles Ponzi: A Look into His Life and Legacy
- Items That Should Never Be Purchased with Home Equity Loans
DirecTV Being Carved Out from AT&T via Stake Sale to TPG
AT&T has been shopping DirecTV for a while now, and has finally found a buyer (in part) from which to recoup some of its 2015 investment.
According to the Wall Street Journal, TPG, a private equity firm, has agreed to a 30% stake for $1.8 billion.
Interestingly, AT&T is not only transitioning DirecTV, but also its other pay-TV offerings - AT&T TV and U-verse - into a new and separate entity that will be jointly run by AT&T and TPG.
Many DirecTV subscribers have complained about the service since AT&T's purchase. Unfortunately, this move doesn't seem to make substantive changes other than to add a management partner and provide AT&T a cash infusion and possibly a bit of financial relief going forward.
Will TPG's experience with media and entertainment be a positive for DirecTV subscribers? Unfortunately, that is unknown. Considering they only hold a 30% share, it likely wouldn't be significant.
Aside from the financial benefit AT&T receives, this deal probably doesn't mean much to DirecTV subscribers hoping for a change in direction.
We'll have to see if retention deals are affected in any way in the months to come.
As a final note, again according to the Wall Street Journal article, AT&T lost 7 million domestic pay-TV subscribers over the last two years (that's DirecTV, AT&T TV and U-verse), while Comcast lost 2 million and Dish lost roughly 1 million. Total subscribers for each service would help with context, but maybe if AT&T was a little better about offering decent retention offers, they wouldn't be leading the pack.