(AFP / PAU BARRENA)
The American telecoms group AT&T will sell its majority stake in satellite television DirecTV to the investment company TPG for $7.6 billion, the latter announced in a press release on Monday.
Since 2021, DirecTV was a joint venture between TPG and AT&T, recalls the American company, which has nearly $230 billion in assets under management worldwide.
With this operation, which should be finalized in the second half of 2025, TPG acquires the 70% of shares remaining until now in AT&T’s ownership, for a total of 7.6 billion dollars, which will be paid by 2029.
The transaction also provides that DirecTV will make an exceptional dividend distribution to its shareholders of at least $1.625 billion before the end of March 2025.
“DirecTV is a pioneer in pay TV and we look forward to continuing to support the company’s innovation in streaming and video offerings,” said David Trujillo, partner at TPG, quoted in the press release.
This operation allows AT&T to continue its withdrawal from entertainment, a sector in which it had invested massively in recent years. In 2015, the telecoms giant bought DirecTV for $48.5 billion.
The ambition was then to bet big on entertainment by creating a group offering both content production and distribution, for example with streaming series to watch on mobile phones.
AT&T, three years later, completed the acquisition of Time Warner for $85 billion, before selling it to Discovery in 2021.
In a separate press release on Monday, DirecTV announced the acquisition of the video distribution activities of the American telecoms group EchoStar, “including Dish TV and Sling TV, in exchange for a nominal consideration of one dollar, as well as of the assumption of Dish’s net debt”, for a total face value of approximately $9.75 billion.
In electronic trading before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, AT&T shares gained 1.2% around 11:50 GMT.
