Arris (Nasdaq: ARRS) hasn't even finally purchased the Motorola Home business unit from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and already it's selling off a chunk to Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), of all companies.
According to an Arris press release, the Georgia-based vendor, which announced it was purchasing the Motorola Home unit from Google in December for about $2.35 billion, has agreed to sell about $150 million in shares of its company to Comcast.By selling those 10.6 million shares to its customer, Arris can increase the amount of cash it's giving Google by $150 million.
So, while Arris isn't actually selling Motorola shares to Comcast--since it doesn't own Motorola yet--and Comcast isn't actually giving Google $150 million, that's the way things seem to be working out.
Anyway, thanks to the share sale, Comcast and Google will each own about 7.85 percent of Arris shares. In the end, this won't impact how much Arris is paying for Motorola Home or the number of shares issued by the company.
Arris Chief Executive Bob Stanzione used the press release to label the investment "to one of our largest customers… a strong indication of customer support for the Motorola Home acquisition and its potential to accelerate innovation to the benefit of the industry and consumers."
It's also an indication of the wide-open nature of the multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) vendor space, since Motorola Home is also a primary supplier to Comcast's presumed archrival Verizon (NYSE: VZ) FiOS. At last week's CES 2013 in Las Vegas, Motorola and Verizon jointly shared announcements about technology advances.
For more:
- Arris issued this press release
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