On The Money

January 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

November 30, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

It seems that ever since Verizon and AT&T seriously began entering the video market, Wall Street and investors have been bracing for what they thought would be the inevitable price war between cable companies and telcos.

But according to a report by Sanford Bernstein cable and satellite analyst Craig Moffett, cable operators aren’t lowering prices to compete with telcos, they’re raising them. And the telcos are the ones that started it all.

Verizon set the standard earlier in November when they announced that prices for its FiOS voice, video and data service would rise 11.6% in 2008. That comes off a 7.6% increase in 2007.

That would have seemed to be the perfect opportunity for cable operators to either keep prices stable or lower them sligh...Read More

October 24, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

BETHPAGE, N.Y.  – Jimmy Dolan looked a little uncomfortable standing at the podium Wednesday at the much anticipated special shareholders meeting to vote on the Dolan family’s $10.6 billion offer to take the cable company private. That, and the gloomy skies hovering over Cablevision’s headquarters here should have been the first tip on how that vote would eventually come out.

About 15 minutes later, senior vice president and corporate secretary Victoria Salhus let the cat out of the bag: the Dolans had not secured the necessary “majority of the minority” shareholder vote to approve the deal.

But prior to the announcement of the tally – the actual vote won’t be released for at least a couple of weeks, according to Cablevision – there were a few signs that all was not well in...Read More

September 13, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

One of the things that have been kind of glossed over amid reports last month that Charter Communications chairman, Microsoft co-founder and really big yacht owner Paul Allen was considering, among other things, taking the cable company private, was the fact that Charter deemed it necessary to create a “poison pill.”

Allen, who formed Charter in the 1990s through the strength of his considerable wallet, controls 91% of Charter’s vote and 52% of its equity. Translation: Nothing gets done, let alone a sale or hostile takeover, without Allen’s say so.

Whenever a company initiates such an action – they’re usually called shareholders rights plans – it’s usually because of a perceived threat. Remember a ...Read More

August 28, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

It was a pretty innocuous suggestion, a throw-away comment really, during a conversation with a stock picker a couple of weeks ago.

“Hey, did you see Time Warner’s announcement that they’ll release earnings on Nov. 7?”

“Sure,” I said. “So what?”

“But they usually release earnings on the first of the month,” the stock picker replied. “Maybe they’re waiting a week because they don’t want to take the big stock hit that normally follows earnings.”

That seemed pretty logical to me. The stock market has been relentlessly unforgiving lately when it comes to cable companies. Stock prices of the six publicly traded cable companies are down 4.2% overall so far this year – the decline grows to 10% if you back out Cablevision Systems, which is up mainly because of ...Read More