AT&T is reducing curtain on its foray into the leisure enterprise, promoting its majority stake in satellite tv for pc TV supplier DirecTV to non-public fairness agency TPG Companions for $7.6 billion.
The deal, introduced Monday, comes greater than a decade after AT&T agreed to purchase DirecTV for $48.5 billion, an acquisition that was designed to present the telecom large a bigger base of video subscribers and assist it compete towards rivals.
However since then, the subscription TV enterprise has been hit by defections from “wire cutters,” or prospects who’ve canceled their cable or satellite tv for pc TV subscriptions in favor of streaming companies equivalent to Netflix. In 2021, following the lack of hundreds of thousands of consumers, AT&T offered a 30% stake of the enterprise to TPG in a deal valued at $16.2 billion.
“This sale permits AT&T to proceed to concentrate on being the main wi-fi 5G and fiber connectivity firm in America,” AT&T mentioned in a press release on Monday.
AT&T’s sale of its remaining 70% stake in DirecTV is predicted to shut within the second half of 2025.
Individually, DirecTV mentioned it’s buying satellite-TV supplier Dish from EchoStar, a deal that additionally contains Sling TV, for $1 plus the belief of roughly $9.8 billion in debt.
Shares of AT&T rose barely earlier than the market opened on Monday.