Almost immediately after Comcast gave up on its plan to purchase Time Warner Cable last year, a number of companies expressed their own interest in making a bid. Rumors began circulating on that Charter would be the one to seal the deal, and now, a year after announcing plans to merge, Charter and Time Warner Cable have merged, and as part of a separate deal, it has also acquired Bright House Networks.
The three companies are now united under a new parent company: New Charter.
Charter spent $67.1 billion in cash and stock on the Time Warner deal, which assessed the latter’s value at $78.7 billion. The Bright House acquisition cost Charter an addition $10.4 billion.
The amount paid surprised some financial analysts a year ago, according to Bloomberg, who said that French telecom Altice’s interest in Time Warner Cable drove up the price. As a point of comparison, Comcast was only looking at spending $45 billion in its failed deal.
New Charter will be led by Charter’s Tom Rutledge, serving as president and CEO. ” I am very pleased that Tom Rutledge will be the CEO of the new company,” Bright House CEO Steve Miron said. “Tom recognizes the importance of placing a high priority focus on customer care drawing from the expertise of all three companies, and I believe this will be a strong pillar of the new company’s culture.”
The merger proceeded smoothly, according to Rutledge, who said that all management teams worked hard to make the deal unfold smoothly.
“I want to thank the management teams and all of the employees at Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for their hard work over these past 12 months,” said Rutledge. “Despite much distraction, they keep their focus on the customer and, as a result, today we join together three companies, each operating with tremendous momentum.”
Before this merger, Charter was the fourth-largest cable provider in the U.S., but even after Charter’s acquisition of these two companies, Comcast will remain in the number one spot. New Charter will take Time Warner Cable’s spot as the second largest provider in the U.S.
This deal nearly doubles the amount of subscribers Charter previously had, adding 12 million customers in major cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas. The new company will now have a total of 23.9 million customers in 41 states.
Updated on 05-18-2016 by Parker Hall: Updated to reflect the fact that the merger has been completed.
