French Company Altice Could Buy Verizon Wireline Assets After buying Suddenlink for $9.1 billion, French telecom company Altice revealed it also considering buying Time Warner Cable, before Charter beat it to the punch. The company has said it's still very hungry for US broadband acquisitions, and most rumors have centered on which cable company or companies (most notably Cablevision) Altice might be interested in buying.

But a new Citigroup research report speculates that it could be Verizon's fixed-line DSL and FiOS that Altice winds up buying. "While press reports suggests many in the market believe Cablevision is Altice's next acquisition, we believe an acquisition of Verizon's local wireline operation (excluding the enterprise and smaller strategic business units) is more likely," Citigroup's Michael Rollins stated. Rollins estimates these assets could be had for as little as $34 billion. Verizon has been making it clear for years that it wants out of the slow ROI fixed-line broadband business, selling off unwanted assets piecemeal in order to focus most of its attention on more profitable (read: capped) wireless data. One utility company recently claimed Verizon has been telling utilities it plans to be out of the fixed-line business within ten years. "A sale of Verizon's remaining (local) operations could accelerate the reduction in financial leverage without meaningful dilution to free cash flow per share," Rollins says. "Such a move would also increase flexibility for Verizon to more aggressively pursue spectrum purchases and further scale for its emerging wireless, over-the-top video strategy." Of course this is based entirely on speculation on the part of Rollins, as neither company has shown public interest in such a scenario. Still, stranger things have happened. Of course this is based entirely on speculation on the part of Rollins, as neither company has shown public interest in such a scenario. Still, stranger things have happened.







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Most recommended from 55 comments



karlmarx

join:2006-09-18

Moscow, ID 9 recommendations karlmarx Member Verizon is digging their own grave Lets be honest, Verizon wants to be a pure wireless company. And it's their belief they can make more money selling wireless service than they can with landline. That's fine. BUT.. they are digging their own grave. Sure, today wireless is a MASSIVELY profitable business, since they can rape the customer on both hardware and data usage. But the day is coming, maybe not this year, maybe not for 5 years or so, but someone or something will completely shake up the wireless infrastructure, and the gravy train trough they are feeding from today will dry up so fast the fat cat executives won't even get a golden parachute. Wireless is only very profitable today because the sheeple have been programmed to pay outrageous amounts for data. That.. will not continue forever, and when verizon is forced to have their average bill drop from $150.00 to $25.00, they will end up in bankruptcy so fast they won't have time to turn off the lights.

The smart move is to plow your wireless profits TODAY into the fiber network for tomorrow. Sure, the margin on fiber is much lower than wireless, but given that 99% of investors are too short sighted to see beyond the profit margin of the next quarter, their lack of foresight will be their doom,

guppy_fish

Premium Member

join:2003-12-09

Palm Harbor, FL 2 recommendations guppy_fish Premium Member doubtful How can a foreign firm buy a critical asset used by the federal government ( and intelligence networks )? I mean now the french could spy on the NSA with there own equipment?