anga_anga 10/05/2014 13:02 Page 5
Liberty to
spin off US
cable
assets
iberty Media has revealed plans to
spin off Liberty Broadband Group
into a separate publicly-traded
company. Greg Maffei, Liberty Media
President and CEO (above) made the
announcement as the company revealed
it Q1 2014 earnings.
Maffei said: “We believe a separate Liberty
Broadband will offer investors greater choice
and transparency, and is well timed with
Charter’s agreements with Comcast which will
result in Charter owning or serving over eight
million video customers.”
Liberty Media’s board has authorised management to pursue a plan to spin-off to its
stockholders common stock of a newly formed
company to be called Liberty Broadband and to
distribute subscription rights to acquire shares
L
CBS’s Moonves:
“Aereo is theft”
Leslie Moonves, Chief
Executive Officer, President
and Director of CBS (right),
has described the operation
of Internet TV streaming
service as “theft” suggesting
he is not losing any sleep
over the outcome of the
Supreme Court copyright
case brought by the major
US networks against the
Barry Diller-backed company.
Anticipating an analyst
question on CBS’s Q1 2014
Earnings Call, Moonves said:
“I suppose this is the time to
save you the question later by
briefly addressing a topic that
8 ADVANCED-TELEVISION.COM
of Liberty Broadband’s common stock. Liberty
Broadband would be comprised of, among
other things, Liberty Media’s (i) interest in
Charter Communications, (ii) subsidiary
TruePosition, (iii) minority equity investment
in Time Warner Cable and (iv) certain deferred
tax and deferred revenue liabilities, as well as
liabilities related to the Time Warner call
option. In the spin-off, record holders of Series
A, Series B and Series C common stock would
receive one-quarter of a share of the corresponding series of Liberty Broadband common
stock for each share of common stock held by
them as of the record date for the spin-off, with
cash in lieu of fractional shares. In addition,
stockholders will also receive a subscription
right to acquire one share of Series C Liberty
Broadband common stock for every five shares
has gotten way more attention than it deserves, and that
is the lovely
Aereo. Aereo is
theft. Pure and
simple. Some are
trying to shift
the issue by
erroneously suggesting it has to
do with our prevention of the
cloud or either
future innovation. This couldn’t be further
from the truth,” he stated.
Moonves was confident
that the court would find
Aereo to be illegal.
“Regardless of the outcome,
of Liberty Broadband common stock they
receive in the spin-off.
The subscription rights are being issued to
raise capital for general corporate purposes of
Liberty Broadband and will enable the holders
to acquire shares of Series C Liberty Broadband
common stock at a 20 per cent discount to the
20-trading day volume weighted average trading price of the Series C Liberty Broadband
common stock following the completion of the
spin-off. Liberty Media expects the subscription
rights to become publicly traded once the exercise price has been established and the rights
offering to expire forty trading days following
the completion of the spin-off.
The completion of the spin-off and the commencement of the rights offering is expected to
occur in the second half of 2014.
though, our growth outlook
will be unaffected. We have
long-term deals
with our MVPD
partners, and
down the