The cable guys have quit feuding and are sweethearts again.
Comcast won the support of John Malone’s Charter Communications by making nice and handing over 3.9 million video subscribers.
The move occurred faster than expected because the country’s largest cable company is feeling a little less certain about winning regulatory approval of its $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and wants to show good faith, sources said.
The Comcast-Charter deal will again redraw the cable map as Comcast will fall below 30 percent market share of the pay-TV industry.
At the same time, it helps Charter become the No. 2 cable operator, leap-frogging Cox Communications, should the mega-merger close.
The complicated three-part agreement is something of a surprise from Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts who had stolen away TWC from under the nose of Charter boss Tom Rutledge after disagreements over how the latter two were going to carve up the New York City-based cable company.
In February, Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis stormed out of a meeting with Charter, which was then in hot pursuit of TWC and was making side deals to spin off subscribers to Comcast.
But that was so last winter.
Now, spring is in the air and friendships, it seems, are budding alongside the geraniums — just as the perennial industry conference kicks off on Tuesday.
Under terms of the Comcast-Charter deal, in which Goldman Sachs and LionTree advised Charter and JPMorgan and Paul J. Taubman repped Comcast:
- Comcast will divest 1.4 million TWC customers for $7.3 billion in cash.
- The companies will transfer assets serving 1.6 million TWC customers and 1.6 million Charter customers into a systems exchange.
- Comcast is spinning off a new public company that will hold 2.5 million Comcast customers. Comcast shareholders will own 67 percent of the new entity while Charter will own 33 percent. Charter will manage the company, to be based in Detroit and Minneapolis-St.Paul.
But all this new math fails to satisfy rival Univision, whose Chief Executive Randy Falco, said, “I am still concerned that the proposed merger could be bad for competition and most importantly, bad for Hispanic audiences.”
Univision is a competitor to Comcast’s Telemundo channel, which is housed at NBCUniversal.
“The fact is that there is not one other media or telecommunications company that has the level of vertical integration of Comcast . . . not Google, not AT&T, not Facebook, not the satellite providers,” Falco said during its earnings call on Monday.
Charter closed up 7.7 percent on Monday, Comcast rose 1.4 percent and Time Warner Cable increased 1.1 percent.
The news also buoyed LI-based Cablevision, which gained 1.3 percent.