Charter to Buy Time Warner for $55 Billion
Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Charter to merge with Time Warner Cable. The deal values Time Warner Cable at $78.7 billion.
Charter will provide $100.00 in cash and shares of a new public parent company equivalent to $0.5409 shares of CHTR for each Time Warner Cable share outstanding. The deal values each Time Warner Cable share at approximately $195.71 based on Charter’s market closing price on May 20, or approximately $200 based on Charter’s 60-trading day volume weighted average price. In addition, Charter will provide an election option for each Time Warner Cable stockholder, other than Liberty Broadband Corporation or Liberty Interactive Corporation, who will receive all stock, to receive $115.00 of cash and New Charter shares equivalent to 0.4562 shares of CHTR for each Time Warner Cable share they own.
In addition, Charter and Advance/Newhouse Partnership today announced that the two companies have amended the agreement which the two parties signed and announced on March 31, 2015, whereby Charter will acquire Bright House Networks for $10.4 billion. That agreement, as amended, provides for Charter and Advance/Newhouse to form a new partnership of which New Charter will own between approximately 86% and 87% and of which Advance/Newhouse will own between approximately 13% and 14%, depending on the Time Warner Cable shareholders’ cash election option described above. The consideration to be paid to Advance/Newhouse by Charter will include common and convertible preferred units in the Partnership, in addition to $2 billion in cash. The common and convertible preferred partnership units will each be exchangeable into shares of New Charter. The Charter-Advance/Newhouse transaction is expected to close contemporaneously with the Charter-Time Warner Cable transaction.