Bids coming in for DirecTV
October 8, 2020
By Chris Forrester
Reports from the US say that pay-TV giant DirecTV, owned by telco AT&T, is definitely up for sale and that some bids are already being submitted.
The New York Post said that “lowball bids” were actively being made and coming mostly from private equity interests. Goldman Sachs is handling the process.
The newspaper says that Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network has not made a bid, although he has long described consolidation between the two US DTH pay-TV players as inevitable.
The first-round bids have taken place and nobody exceeded offering $20 billion for the business which is suffering declining subscribers. AT&T paid $49 billion (including debt) for the business back in July 2015.
It could be that the final bid – if accepted – would allow AT&T to retain a minority stake in DirecTV.