|
 Charter, the No. 4 cable operator, proposed paying $132.50 per share — barely higher than where Time Warner Cable shares closed on Monday — consisting of around $83 per share in cash and its own stock.
Monday's offer is the boldest sign yet that cable billionaire and
dealmaker John Malone thinks that new managers could do a better job
running the company, which has fallen behind by not investing enough
in taking on competitors and shifting to digital technology.
Malone's Liberty Media Corp owns 27 percent of Charter.
Including debt, the deal is worth $62.35 billion. Time Warner Cable
shareholders would get 45 percent ownership in the combined company.
The letter was Charter's third attempt to buy the company, according
to its executives, and within a few hours of receiving it, Time
Warner Cable's board rejected the offer as "grossly inadequate."
"In essence, these guys are just trying to get a premium asset at a
bargain basement price," said Time Warner Cable Chief Executive
Officer Rob Marcus in an interview. "This makes the job of fending
it off rather straightforward. Our shareholders will see it as what
it is, an attempt to steal the company."
Marcus, who took over the top post on January 1 after eight years,
said the board told Charter it was open to a price of $160 per
share, consisting of $100 in cash and $60 per share of Charter's
stock.
Charter now plans to take the deal directly to Time Warner Cable
shareholders, said Charter's CEO Tom Rutledge in an interview.
"(Time Warner Cable) came back to us with a design to be dismissive.
They have not engaged with us. All of the conversations have been
one way," Rutledge said.
Rutledge, who spent 23 years at Time Warner Cable earlier in his
career, told Reuters he could run the company better and pointed to
how Time Warner Cable shed more than 500,000 video subscribers in
the past two quarters.
HIGHER BID?
Rutledge said Time Warner Cable shareholders should be happy with
the $83 per share cash component of the deal, since it is not that
far off the stock price before the takeover speculation began six
months ago.
"The purpose of going to the public is to talk to Time Warner
shareholders and to ask them to consider how valuable this deal is
and to ask management and the board to engage," he said. He added
that a proxy contest in which Time Warner Cable shareholders could
vote in new directors friendly to a Charter bid was a possibility.
The season for naming such rival board slates starts this week.
Time Warner Cable's Chief Financial Officer Arthur Minson said he
doubted Charter could launch a viable proxy fight.
"Essentially what you'd have to do is try to get new board members
who would have to breach their fiduciary duty by trying to sell the
company to Charter cheaply," Minson said.
Macquarie analyst Amy Yong said she expects Charter to raise its
bid.
"This is just the opening round of the negotiations," Yong said.
"This was Charter sending notice that they won't overpay."
Charter CEO Rutledge wouldn't comment on whether the company would
consider a higher offer, and said the company would be disciplined
about raising the bid.
[to top of second column] |
The letter was necessary, he said, because talks with the board had
not progressed in the past six months. A hostile move is unusual, he
admitted, in the clubby cable industry, where companies do not
directly compete with each other.
Rutledge said Charter had financing was in place and banks could
sign commitment letters "in a matter of days."
Charter stock was up 1.3 percent in after-hours trading while Time
Warner Cable shares were up 1.8 percent at $135.
ISI analyst Vijay Jayant said that "we think an ultimate
consolidation of the two companies would be beneficial for both sets
of shareholders."
Rutledge declined to give an estimate on potential cost savings from
a deal but said they were "significant" and his company had told
Time Warner Cable what they were.
Reuters has previously reported that Liberty management had told
investors that synergies could be as high as $700 million.
Liberty Media, Charter's largest stockholder, has the option to
invest more equity in the company and wants to maintain its current
27 percent stake in the company.
In a statement, a Liberty spokeswoman said, "We support Charter's
efforts and look forward to participating."
Rutledge said he was not in talks with Comcast Corp to get the No. 1
U.S. cable provider involved in the bidding process. Marcus at Time
Warner Cable declined to comment on Comcast.
"This is Charter bidding for Time Warner. That's the only discussion
we have going," he said.
Comcast, which has been seen as a candidate to bid alone or jointly
for Time Warner Cable, did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Time Warner has become one of the industry's weakest performers.
Leichtman Research Group estimates that over the past two years, the
company lagged rivals by losing nearly 10 percent of nearly 13
million video customers.
Minson, the finance chief, said Time Warner Cable would increase its
capital investment this year to improve the company's product and
reliability.
Charter said Goldman Sachs and Liontree Advisors were lead advisers.
Guggenheim Securities was also a financial adviser to Charter.
BofA Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc
are also financial advisers to Charter, and together with Goldman
Sachs, are leading the financing for the transaction. The law firms
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Kirkland & Ellis LLP are also
representing Charter.
(Reporting by Liana B. Baker and Nicola
Leske in New York; Ron Grover in Los Angeles; editing by Bernard
Orr, Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
