The IPO Of AT&T Spinoff Vrio: What You Need To Know

AT&T Inc. T announced Thursday that its subsidiary Vrio Corp. filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “VRIO.”

Vrio, a holding company for AT&T’s Latin American entertainment assets — DIRECTV Latin America and SKY Brasil — will distribute all proceeds to the parent company, partly in payment of debt.

With Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley as joint book-running managers, Vrio intends to offer 29,684,000 shares of Class A common stock priced between $19 and $22. After the offering, the company will list both Class A and Class B common stock, each majority-controlled by AT&T.

What’s Vrio?

At the end of last year, the 12-year-old company boasted 13.6 million subscribers — a 9.3-percent year-over-year increase — across 11 countries in South America and the Caribbean. In nine of its markets, it ranked top two among competitors América Móvil, Grupo Clarin and Telefónica.

Vrio identifies a 400-million-person addressable market, with just 38 percent of South American households subscribed to pay TV. The company is slowly penetrating the region. Between 2011 and 2016, Vrio claimed 35 percent of the region’s total pay TV subscriber growth and 50 percent of satellite TV subscriber growth.

Last year, Vrio posted 10.9-percent year-over-year revenue growth with $5.57 billion.

Related Links:

The US Vs. AT&T-Time Warner: Inside The M&A Trial Of The Decade

Wells Fargo: AT&T, Time Warner Ought To Beware The Ides Of March