According to reports, the SoftBank CEO met with Buffett and John Malone of Liberty Media at Sun Valley conference
First it was a potential Sprint/T-Mobile U.S. tie-up, then MVNO talks with Comcast and Charter, and now published reports suggest Sprint is courting investment from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and John Malone’s Liberty Media. According to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, SoftBank Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, whose company has controlling interest in the U.S. carrier, along with Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, met with Buffett and Malone at the Allen and Company Sun Valley Conference held annually in the Idaho ski resort community.
Siting people familiar with the conversations, the ask from Sprint is in the $10 billion to $20 billion range, according to Reuters. None of the parties involved have made any public statements. On the news, initially circulated on July 14, Sprint stock closed up 4.3% at $8.55 per share.
Claure and Braxton Carter, CFO of T-Mobile U.S., which is owned by German company Deutsche Telekom, talked about the potential synergies of a merger in separate discussions during the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference yesterday in Boston, Mass.
In separate discussions at the event, both Claure and Carter agreed that analysts were low-balling the potential synergies of a merger with estimates of $30 billion, with Carter saying that the number ” may be conservative” and Claure commenting that a synergy number from a Sprint/T-Mobile US merger would be “much larger, in our opinion.”
As to the Comcast/Charter arrangement, Malone and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts have reportedly backed an exclusive deal with Sprint which prevented the carrier from talking to any other potential partners until late July. Malone’s Liberty Broadband is the largest shareholder in Charter Communications. Comcast and Charter, the nation’s two largest cable operators, apparently want the right of first refusal when it comes to buying the wireless carrier that is number four in terms of subscribers and number one in terms of spectrum assets.
Comcast and Charter are said to be more likely to sign a reseller agreement with Sprint than to actually try to buy the company. Right now both cable companies have the right to resell wireless service using Verizon’s spectrum, and Comcast has already launched wireless service under this arrangement. But the cable companies might be able to get better terms from Sprint, and they might be able to get more access to the high-band spectrum that will be key to offering 5G wireless services.
Now, back to Buffett; he has been invested in Malone-controlled companies since 2011 including Liberty Media, Liberty Global Plc and Charter.
