Word: comcasts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this a good time to talk?" Brian Roberts asks. The CEO of Comcast, the largest cable company in the U.S., is on the phone for a quick interview before jetting off to meet with investors and pitch his latest gambit: a $66 billion hostile takeover of the Walt Disney...
...Street investment bankers and Hollywood power players salivating: the Cable Guy from Philadelphia vs. the Monarch of the Magic Kingdom. For Roberts, who started his career selling subscriptions door to door for his father's fledgling cable company, it is the boldest move of a 23-year run at Comcast. And it threatens the reign of Eisner, one of the information age's legendary moguls. "He will not go down without a fight," says Joe Roth, former chairman of Walt Disney Studios...
...them from an albatross into a moneymaker. He recaptured or replaced subscribers lost under AT&T management in 2002, boosted operating cash flow and upgraded the systems to make high-definition television available to more than 80% of subscribers ahead of schedule. With $18.3 billion in revenues in 2003, Comcast bills 21.5 million cable subscribers each month (out of 40 million potential customers in the areas it services) and, after unloading its stake in the QVC home-shopping network for $7.9 billion, has a balance sheet healthy enough to go at Disney...
Meanwhile, Roberts was in New York City telling shareholders that Comcast could run Disney better than Disney can--or more pointedly, better than Eisner can. In a press conference, Roberts and Comcast Cable president Stephen Burke promised they would increase Disney's cash flow by up to $1.2 billion in three years. "You have to be reasonably skeptical about that," says Moffett. Yet Disney's 2003 net income is down $583 million from its 1998 peak of $1.85 billion, and Disney shares hovered at about $24, down from a high of $43.63 in April 2000, before a run-up last...
Calling for AT&T Mergers are like buses: you wait ages for one, and then three show up. Hostile bids - Comcast's for Disney, Sanofi's for Aventis - are reviving the mergers...