Dish Network launches $25.5B bid to merge with Sprint

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
The nation's no. 2 U.S. satellite television provider made waves in the worldwide wireless industry today, as Dish Network launched a $25.5 billion bid that could see it snagging Sprint from Japanese communications firm Softbank.

dish ripples
Dish already offers high-speed Internet, television, and phone service, and hopes to add wireless by acquiring Sprint.


News of Dish's merger proposal broke on Monday, with The Wall Street Journal reporting on Dish's combined cash and stock offer. Under the deal, Dish would offer $7 per share of Sprint stock, of which $4.76 would be cash and $2.24 would be Dish stock.

Dish says that its offer represents a 12 percent premium over Sprint's closing price on Friday and a 13 percent premium over a rival offer from Japanese telecommunications and Internet company Softbank.

Softbank in October made a $20 billion bid for a controlling share of Sprint. That bid would have Softbank holding 70 percent of Sprint's shares, but shareholders have yet to approve the deal.

Dish's proposal would leave Dish shareholders in control of the resulting combined company, which would hold more than $36 billion in debt before taking into account the additional $9 billion Dish would have to borrow to make the deal go through. Dish would also have to pay a $600 million "breakup fee" to Softbank.

Sprint's $35.3 billion in revenue for 2012 is more than twice the $14.3 billion Dish booked for the same year.

The resulting entity would occupy a peculiar spot in the U.S. telecom industry. Sprint is the nation's third-largest wireless carrier, and Dish Network its second-largest satellite TV provider. A Sprint-Dish hybrid, then, would be able to provide video, high-speed Internet, and voice service across the country. Dish Chairman Charles Ergen floated the possibility of customers without access to broadband from a cable company being able to sign up for wireless Internet service delivered from Sprint cell phone towers to an antenna installed on their roof.

Dish has been looking to parlay its existing service into a wider wireless provider status for some time now. The satellite TV provider has been buying up spectrum to make a move into wireless, and earlier this year Dish made an informal bid to buy out Sprint-owned Clearwire. The Clearwire deal, though, is said to have stalled due to difficulties stemming from the multiple partners with a stake in the company.

Aside from the "breakup fee," the Sprint deal is said to be much easier to complete. Neither Softbank nor Sprint has commented on the offer as of yet. Sprint shares were up 15.43 percent pre-market on Monday.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 29
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Will the combined entity be called Dash?
  • Reply 2 of 29
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ascii View Post



    Will the combined entity be called Dash?


     


    I think "Splish" sounds much fancier.  

  • Reply 3 of 29
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Why not call it Pindrop Satellite?


     


    Does that date me, immediately associating Sprint with that? image

  • Reply 4 of 29
    malaxmalax Posts: 1,598member


    Dish Network and Sprint still exist?  Is this the merger of the also-rans?

  • Reply 5 of 29
    Next up: Time Warner or Comcast bids for T-Mobile.
  • Reply 6 of 29
    That is a lot of debt to create a service that is rapidly becoming a utility.
  • Reply 7 of 29
    [B]Samsung, the Dirty Trickster
    [/B]
    The case stems from media reports on a post in an online forum on April 1 that said Samsung hired workers in Taiwan to open several sock-puppet accounts as part of a marketing campaign to promote its new flagship phone Galaxy S4 in the country. The post, which has gone viral online, said OpenTide Taiwan, a marketing company hired by Samsung, asked part-time workers to use multiple propaganda accounts on the Internet to promote the company's phones and attack products from its rivals.

    A "sock-puppet account" is an account set up to by a user to assume a false identity, usually with the intention to deceive or mislead others in online communities.

    Although Samsung denies the claims, you have to wonder if they've employed such tactics in the past against other rivals such as Apple. I don't think that such a revelation would surprise many.
    [U]http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/04/the-fair-trade-commission-opens-investigation-on-dirty-trickster-samsung.html[/U]
    :smokey::smokey:
  • Reply 8 of 29
    bleh1234bleh1234 Posts: 146member
    selva raj wrote: »
    Samsung, the Dirty Trickster

    The case stems from media reports on a post in an online forum on April 1 that said Samsung hired workers in Taiwan to open several sock-puppet accounts as part of a marketing campaign to promote its new flagship phone Galaxy S4 in the country. The post, which has gone viral online, said OpenTide Taiwan, a marketing company hired by Samsung, asked part-time workers to use multiple propaganda accounts on the Internet to promote the company's phones and attack products from its rivals.

    A "sock-puppet account" is an account set up to by a user to assume a false identity, usually with the intention to deceive or mislead others in online communities.

    Although Samsung denies the claims, you have to wonder if they've employed such tactics in the past against other rivals such as Apple. I don't think that such a revelation would surprise many.
    http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/04/the-fair-trade-commission-opens-investigation-on-dirty-trickster-samsung.html
    :smokey::smokey:

    Relate to dishnetwork in what ways?
  • Reply 9 of 29


    This is appleinsider,Relate to dishnetwork in what ways?

  • Reply 10 of 29
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    Am I the only one that thinks these deals and mergers are bad for actual people in the long run?
  • Reply 11 of 29
    dysamoria wrote: »
    Am I the only one that thinks these deals and mergers are bad for actual people in the long run?

    Probably. Unless others dislike capitalism too.
    :-)
  • Reply 12 of 29
    gwmacgwmac Posts: 1,807member


    Softbank has pretty deep pockets so I think they can easily outbid Dish. They also bring a lot more to the table since they are a cell carrier that successfully competed with two much larger rivals in Japan and managed to steal customers from their rivals.  Dish wants this deal because they have spectrum that they have to use or risk losing. Sprint owns 51% of Clearwire now and are trying to buy the remaining shares so they already have plenty of spectrum as it is with 800/1900/2500, they do not need the additional Dish spectrum. This is good news for Sprint since it will probably mean even more money from Softbank to aid in building out the LTE network even faster. 

  • Reply 13 of 29
    andysolandysol Posts: 2,506member
    gwmac wrote: »
    Softbank has pretty deep pockets so I think they can easily outbid Dish. They also bring a lot more to the table since they are a cell carrier that successfully competed with two much larger rivals in Japan and managed to steal customers from their rivals.  Dish wants this deal because they have spectrum that they have to use or risk losing. Sprint owns 51% of Clearwire now and are trying to buy the remaining shares so they already have plenty of spectrum as it is with <span style="background-color:rgb(249,249,249);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19px;">800/1900/2500</span>
    , they do not need the additional Dish spectrum. This is good news for Sprint since it will probably mean even more money from Softbank to aid in building out the LTE network even faster. 
    I think dish sees the writing on the wall too. They want to move from television to Internet and cellular- which is the future. Just holding onto tv is a losing proposition. So it's a desperate and needed move on their part. Although not too desperate because its still early.

    Side note: didn't Dish buy blockbuster too? Yikes....
  • Reply 14 of 29


    In the NY Times article on this proposed merger today, Dish Network is paraphrased as saying "roll television, high-speed Internet and cellphone services into a single package".   Oh joy! More BUNDLES!   Now, to get Sprint cell phone service, you have to bundle in a TV package that includes 10 channels of home-shopping network, 10 channels of "paid programming", 20 channels of sports,  20 channels of foreign language shows, and 20 channels of "public access".  But you will still need to pay extra to get HBO.

     

  • Reply 15 of 29
    brutus009brutus009 Posts: 356member
    As a shareholder, I'd rather see Sprint purchased by a cell company so as to maintain network and customer focus. If their service starts getting stuffed into bundles, you can bet their technological progresses will grind to a halt... which is the LAST thing they need right now.
  • Reply 16 of 29
    andysol wrote: »
    I think dish sees the writing on the wall too. They want to move from television to Internet and cellular- which is the future. Just holding onto tv is a losing proposition. So it's a desperate and needed move on their part. Although not too desperate because its still early.

    Side note: didn't Dish buy blockbuster too? Yikes....

    I still actually see Apple purchasing Dish at some point .
  • Reply 17 of 29
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by bmason1270 View Post

    I still actually see Apple purchasing Dish at some point .


     


    Why? For what purpose?

  • Reply 18 of 29
    bleh1234bleh1234 Posts: 146member
    Why? For what purpose?
    Tax write-off? :O
  • Reply 19 of 29
    For content delivery for a Apple TV and for the spectrum to also be able to deliver content over cell as well.
  • Reply 20 of 29
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by bmason1270 View Post

    For content delivery for a Apple TV and for the spectrum to also be able to deliver content over cell as well.


     


    There's an 800 millisecond delay at the absolute minimum. You'll notice that on phone calls (worse experience) and multiplayer games will be unplayable. So it's no good for Apple's phones.


     


    For the Apple TV, the answer isn't "wait at home between 8 AM and 9 PM for some guy to disrupt your life to install a satellite dish on your house". It's Internet. That's how its content will be served.

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