Advanced Television

AT&T pulls DirecTV LatAm IPO

April 19, 2018

By Chris Forrester

The long-awaited, but much delayed, Initial Public Offering (IPO) for the AT&T-owned Vrio division is not going ahead – at least for the moment. Vrio looks after the DirecTV broadcast activity over South America and the Caribbean region.

AT&T was due to mount the IPO today (April 19th) and only last week said the IPO would raise around $650 million for the giant telco. But in a very brief statement the company said: “AT&T Inc. has decided to withdraw its planned initial public offering of shares of Vrio Corp. The company made this decision based on current market conditions”.

AT&T would have used the proceeds of the IPO to pay down some of its significant debt, currently likely to grow to around $180 billion once the purchase of Time Warner (for $85 million) closes.

Last year, DirecTV LatAm had some 13.6 million subs, and had grown those numbers by 9.3 per cent y-o-y. Vrio operates in eight countries in South America and three in the Caribbean.

Categories: Articles, Business, IPO