Cox Communications’ president Pat Esser has reportedly held talks with Charter Communications’ largest shareholder Liberty Media regarding a merger between the two US cablecos.
The structure of any deal is yet to be established and privately-owned…
Cox Communications’ president Pat Esser has reportedly held talks with Charter Communications’ largest shareholder Liberty Media regarding a merger between the two US cablecos.
The structure of any deal is yet to be established and privately-owned Cox has not begun direct talks with Charter, according to Bloomberg which cited two people with knowledge of the matter.
Liberty and Charter also continue to be interested in acquiring Time Warner Cable, the report said.
Charter’s stock closed 4.72% up following the news as its shares rose by more than US$6 to US$134.
There has been a flurry of speculation regarding consolidation in US cable, particularly since John Malone re-entered the sector by acquiring a 27% stake in Charter through Liberty at the start of May.
He has been reported as saying that Charter could become a “horizontal acquisition machine” and that cablecos need to gain scale to negotiate better deals with television networks.
In a note, Moffett Research senior analyst Craig Moffett agreed: “At the centre of the recent swirl of consolidation speculation surrounding Time Warner Cable and Charter and Cox and Cablevision has been the issue of programming costs. The small need more scale and negotiating leverage. The goal? To be more like Comcast.”
Comcast has 22 million subscribers, ahead of Time Warner Cable’s 12 million. Cox and Charter can each count around 4 million customers.
