Moffett explained that AT&T's strategy at the time was to buy a TV distributor to diversify its business in hopes of supporting a "very large, costly dividend."
What companies did AT&T buy?
That $85 billion acquisition — which put Warner Bros., HBO, CNN, TBS, and TNT, among others, under AT&T’s banner — made AT&T the most highly leveraged company in the world. In an ironic twist, the move to buy Time Warner was brought about at least in part by the same rapidly changing media landscape that ultimately crippled DirecTV.
How much did AT&T pay for the original deal?
The original deal, which cost AT&T $67 billion with debt, happened as the pay-TV landscape completely — and drastically — shifted. Streaming businesses like Netflix ( NFLX) began to gain popularity, leading to an acceleration of cord-cutting that made DirecTV less dominant in the marketplace.
Is AT&T trying to unload DirecTV?
Although the marriage is less than six years old, AT&T (CN N’s parent company) has been trying to unload DirecTV, or at least a portion of it, for quite some time . The “nonsensical” merger will go down in history “as one of the worst deals ever made,” according to Craig Moffett, a telecom analyst at MoffettNathanson.
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