Dish Network (s DISH), the satellite pay-tv company, has decided it wants to buy Sprint Corp (s S) and has offered $25.5 billion for the beleaguered third-place wireless carrier. It is offering $7 a share, or about $4.76 a share in cash and about $2.24 in Dish stock. That’s 13 percent or about $5.4 billion higher than the $20.1 billion offered by Softbank of Japan.
The cash component of Dish’s proposal is an 18 percent premium over the $4.03 per share implied by the SoftBank proposal while the equity portion represents approximately 32 percent ownership in the combined Dish/Sprint versus SoftBank’s proposal of a 30 percent interest in just Sprint, Dish claimed in a press release. Dish CEO and chairman Charlie Ergen said:
“The DISH proposal clearly presents Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank proposal. Sprint shareholders will benefit from a higher price with more cash while also creating the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in a combined DISH/Sprint with a significantly-enhanced strategic position and substantial synergies that are not attainable through the pending SoftBank proposal.”
Dish is trying for a complete makeover from its slow growing pay-TV business and has been acquiring spectrum to build a nationwide LTE network, though from the looks of it, it will take it a long time to actually roll out the network. It recently asked the FCC for a four year extension to build out its network.
Here is the Dish website where its outlines the entire proposal and have explained its bid in detail.
is this the same DISH ? Who provides Dish TV CAS service in India ?!!
It would seem that DISH is looking to this as a means of providing TV AND internet to customers in an effort to woo them from cable companies.
My question is whether this would eliminate those Comcastic messages that appear on my TV telling me “We have detected an interruption in your service. blah-blah-blah.” which are caused by problems with Comcast, NOT by a bad cable connection on any of my TVs.
On the one hand, you have Masayoshi Son, a man known for disrupting things to some extent who brings perhaps an implied promise that he’s gonna disrupt wireless and do something different than what we’ve seen so far.
And on the other hand, you have Charlie Ergen, one of the shrewdest, cheapest CEOs out there. And apparently not much fun to work for. Would he disrupt wireless? Doubtful. Charlie is all about ROI. Sprint would get squeezed like a sponge.
IIRC, both are self-made too.
Hard to choose but I’d like to see what Softbank can do. It’s been a long time since the US wireless market had an outsider come to town. Maybe Softbank can be what’s needed. That or Vodafone buying VZW and bringing their brand here.
Hey Dish, do yourself a favor and not only reinvent the content delivery model to wireless, but also embrace an Ala Carte channel model that gives viewers flexibility and there is no way you can lose!
I think there may be an error in the article. Based on numerous other articles, the softbank offer is for 70% of Sprint, not 30%.