The major players in cable's latest round of M&A talks continue to position themselves via leaks to major mainstream news outlets, with unnamed sources affiliated with Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) telling Bloomberg that the cable company is not giving up on acquiring Bright House Networks.
According to the news service, Charter and Bright House remain in active discussions about a deal revising a $10.4 billion March merger agreement that became null and void when Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) walked away from its $45 billion deal to acquire Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC).
Bloomberg says Charter executives view a purchase of Bright House as a "precursor" to an eventual secondary acquisition of the much larger TWC. Bright House, which is privately owned by Si Newhouse's Advance Newhouse publishing company, shares a corporate lineage with TWC. In fact, to this day, Bright House leverages TWC's scale to acquire program-licensing rights.
Last week, it was reported that Newhouse had broken off talks to reset the deal with Charter. Reuters reported that the Newhouse family, which also owns Conde Nast, doesn't believe that combining with Charter will improve that leverage position.
Bright House, the sixth-largest cable company in the U.S., continues to officially state that the talks are a routine part of a 30-day negotiation window, triggered when the Comast-TWC deal collapsed on April 24.
Charter is not commenting at this point.
For more:
- read this Bloomberg story
Related links:
Bright House Networks plans to drop merger with Charter, report says
WSJ: Both TWC and Charter now looking to acquire Bright House
Collapse of Comcast-TWC merger to have wide-reaching domino effect, analyst says