AT&T can’t find buyer for DirecTV Latino
September 11, 2020
By Chris Forrester
AT&T is struggling to find a potential buyer for its DirecTV Latin American satellite DTH business which trades as Vrio.
Bloomberg reports that AT&T’s CEO John Stankey is looking to dump non-essential and non-performing divisions under the AT&T umbrella. It lists the AT&T divisions now up for sale and which includes the whole or part of DirecTV, as well as the LatAm business, along with ad-business XandA and anime streaming platform Crunchyroll.
Vrio’s DTH footprint extends over much of central and south America, as well as the Caribbean. In May this year DirecTV pulled out of Venezuela, for example because of political problems.
Vrio’s subscriber count fell 21 per cent in Q2 this year, down to 10.7 million from 13.5 million a year ago. Revenue fell commensurately, by 27 per cent to $752 million and translating into a division loss of $79 million for the first-half of this year.