Crawford Buys Into Cable
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 2/16/2001 11:03:00 AM
After a yearlong hiatus, influential investor Gordon Crawford is getting back into cable in a big way by significantly increasing his position in operators he had drastically cut back in 1999.
According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Crawford increased his cable portfolio by more than $3 billion between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31. His largest purchases: 57 million shares of AT&T Corp. and 16.5 million shares of Comcast Corp.
Crawford, senior vice president of Capital Research & Management Co., did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The investor had been rumored to be back in the cable game for months, but it wasn't until last week -- when Capital Research and Capital Guardian released their year-end portfolio reports -- that the extent of his return was revealed.
According to industry observers, Crawford was disturbed by competition from direct-broadcast satellite providers and overbuilders, and he significantly reduced his holdings in pure-play cable operators last year from about $8 billion to less than $600 million.
When he trimmed his holdings last year, Crawford held onto a few key issues, including Time Warner Inc. (now AOL Time Warner Inc.), but he completely divested from Adelphia Communications Corp. and Cox Communications Inc.
But in the three months between September and December, Capital Research -- Crawford's largest fund, with about $216 billion in assets -- replenished those positions and then some, buying 100,000 shares of Adelphia and 1.85 million shares of Cox.
The fund also boosted its stake in AT&T by 56 percent, adding 57 million shares to end the period with 158.1 million shares of the phone giant's stock.
Capital Guardian -- a smaller fund with about $40 billion in assets -- also bought heavily in cable during the period. It grew its AT&T stake by 3.5 million shares to 5.3 million; increased its Cablevision Systems Corp. stock by 1.6 million shares to 5.8 million; and added another 1.1 million shares to its AOL Time Warner stake.
Crawford also apparently had a yen for DBS, upping his stake in EchoStar Communications Corp. from 75,000 shares in September to 1.8 million shares as of Dec. 31.
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