Reuters reported AT&T’s biggest deals over the last decade. AT&T is the third largest telecom operator in the United States in terms of mobile phone subscribers.
AT&T spent billions of dollars over the last few years buying media assets, including Time Warner and DirecTV as it looked for growth beyond an increasingly competitive cellular market.
AT&T is divesting its media assets to Discovery. AT&T earlier sold its stake in DirecTV to buyout firm TPG Capital. AT&T is working on streamlining its business, paying down its debt and focusing on expanding its 5G network.
Discovery acquired Scripps Networks Interactive for $11.9 billion in 2017 and the Oprah Winfrey Network last year for about $36 million.
Here is a timeline of AT&T’s largest deals over the last ten years:
2012 – Acquired the equity of NextWave Wireless for up to $50 million and took on $550 million of the company’s debt.
2013 – Bought prepaid wireless provider Leap Wireless International Inc in a deal valued at about $4 billion. The deal included a large debt component.
2014 – Bought satellite TV provider DirecTV for $48.5 billion.
2016 – Agreed to buy media firm Time Warner Inc for $85 billion, in the boldest move by a telecoms company to buy content to stream over its network.
2020 – Agreed to sell its Crunchyroll anime business to Sony’s Fumination Global Group in $1.18 billion deal. The deal gave Sony access to Crunchyroll’s 3 million paying subscribers.
2021 – Agreed to sell one-third of its stake in DirecTV to buyout firm TPG Capital in a deal valuing the business at about $16 billion, well below what it paid for the asset less than six years earlier.
