CNBC's Jim Cramer offered his take on a potential deal during Thursday's segment of "Squawk on the Street."
'Significant' Combination
According to Cramer, a business combination would be "significant" for Verizon as it just came off "the worst quarter of any of the Dow stocks." He added that there has been a lot of chatter this week, which suggested that Verizon may need to pursue a large-scale deal.
The show's co-host David Faber jumped in and pointed out that Charter has a large shareholder in John Malone and Liberty Media Group LMCA, and this alone poses a set of challenges for any deal.
Faber continued that the combination of Verizon and Charter would be different from other M&A deals in the sector such as AT&T Inc. T expanding into content and content offerings with the acquisition of Time Warner Inc TWX.
In Verizon's case, an acquisition of Charter would be more of an expansion of its footprint in terms of infrastructure.
Faber then suggested that a deal could be constructed in which Verizon divests its Fios and wireline business and then merge with Charter. However, Cramer countered that doing so would create a stock with a higher multiple but the "big" dividend payout may be discontinued.
Bottom line, Faber suggested that there will be big deals happening this year within the communications space and a Verizon Charter combination "might be one of them," but he isn't running to "bank on it."
Image Credit: By The Conmunity - Pop Culture Geek from Los Angeles, CA, USA (CES 2012 - Verizon) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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