Private Equity Group Looking to Acquire DirecTV and Dish Network . . .
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That headline makes no sense at all when Apollo would only have a minor stake in the combined company in exchange for financing the deal. How is that "Looking to Acquire..."?
What in the world would be the point of giving AT&T $20B to pay off debt and then let them continue to run DirecTV into the ground? Where would the return be? 
And after all, we know how well AT&T runs their acquisitions.
Right into the ground.
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Right into the ground.
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I have read the Number #1 stockholder at Dish is not interested in selling. So if there is a merger, Dish will probably take over Direct. Who knows if the gov will allow such a merger.
The ONLY way I could see Charlie being interested in this deal would be if Dish became the majority owner.
As unlikely on the surface of it of that happening, that's the only way it is going to happen if it does.
I agree it's pretty unlikely to go that way. But then again, while DTV has more subscribers, their current owner has a boat load of debt that's worrying to their investors. A multi-billion dollar cash infusion could help allay those fears...
They need the subscriber count for a good negotiating position.
DTV seems to be losing subs faster than Dish. I think the future value of Dish is greater than the future value of DTV, especially if ATT gets to keep running it for another couple of years.
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DTV seems to be losing subs faster than Dish. I think the future value of Dish is greater than the future value of DTV, especially if ATT gets to keep running it for another couple of years.
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I think it would totally depend on whether or not Charlie is going to realistically be able to make 5G/cellular happen. If the T-Mo/Sprint deal is approved, then Charlie gets Boost Mobile, some additional spectrum, and is immediately set up as someone who at least has a chance of becoming a viable 4th cellular player. He'll need a lot of capital infusion to build out a 5G network from scratch, though. So if that scenario comes to pass, I could see him deciding to sell off part of DISH and relinquish operational control as it merges into DirecTV. Then he'd be free to focus on cellular. Charlie knows that satellite TV is in irreversible decline and 5G is his ticket out of it and into a long-term sustainable business.
But if the T-Mo/Sprint deal gets blocked and Charlie's back to being a guy with a bunch of spectrum licenses that will expire soon if he doesn't build them out (a pretty much impossible task), then I don't know what he does. But it seems unlikely in that case that he'd want to sell out of the only real business he's got, satellite TV.
Remember, Charlie has been clear from day one, his 5G is for IoT, not cellular.
And 5G could be another medium for delivering Dish.
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And 5G could be another medium for delivering Dish.
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IIRC Dish even has some patents on multicasting (1-to-many) video.
Keep in mind that Charlie and Apollo Global are not strangers. They've already been in talks about financing the Sprint/T-Mobile deal...
Apollo in talks to finance Dish Network bid for T-Mobile, Sprint assets - sources
Yeah. I imagine Charlie's been talking to lots of deep pockets lately as potential funding sources for his proposed 5G network build-out. I think he's even said as much. Gonna take a lot of cash to get that big job done (which is why I always figured that his real endgame was just to sell all his spectrum licenses at a profit to one or more of the existing 4 networks and let them tackle the capital-intensive job of building it out).
Pretty sure that he's said IoT is just phase 1 of the spectrum build-out (and that's because it's the cheapest and easiest thing to do in order to keep the FCC from yanking his licenses for failure to use it by the 2020 deadline). No, his longer-term stated plan is to build out a full-fledged fully virtualized 5G-only network from scratch that can do all sorts of stuff. The virtualized aspect of the network means that it would support network slicing, so it could dynamically allocate bandwidth to various third parties who would pay for access. Prior to this whole thing coming up with the T-Mo/Sprint deal, it wasn't clear whether or not Charlie wanted to actually run his own consumer-facing cellular service or not. But if the deal goes through, then it would appear that he is in fact committed to that (and would start by taking over Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile).
IDK, I still think that it makes more sense in the end for his spectrum to somehow end up in the hands of big cable (Comcast+Charter+Altice+Cox). As the 5G era plays out, the lines will blur between home and mobile (cellular) broadband, with 5G used for both, and everyone offering both kinds of service. Big cable obviously has a strong presence in home broadband but they mainly rely now on buying access to Verizon and Sprint's mobile networks to resell to their customers. In the long run, they'd be better off joining together to build their own.
