Dish tops Softbank's offer for Sprint

Dylan Bushell-Embling
16 Apr 2013
00:00

Japan's Softbank is facing a competing bid for US operator Sprint Nextel, with Dish Network making an unsolicited $25.5 billion offer.

Dish Network, a US satellite TV provider, is offering $7 per share for Sprint, comprising $4.76 in cash and the rest in Dish shares.

The new bid compares to the $20.1 billion Softbank has offered for a 70% stake in Sprint, in a deal that had been accepted by the Sprint board.

Dish claims that its offer represents a 13% premium to Softbank's, and that a combination would result in $37 billion worth of synergies including $11 billion in cost savings.

Informa Telecoms and Media principal analyst Mike Roberts said a combined Dish-Sprint would combine the third-largest pay TV and mobile operators in the US.

“Dish could combine its 2-GHz LTE spectrum with the LTE spectrum of Sprint and Clearwire to build one of the strongest LTE spectrum portfolios in US, which would be the foundation for a powerful new competitor in the US telecoms market,” he said.

Roberts said the Softbank deal is not without Synergies of its own, “including a common focus on the new 2.5GHz TD-LTE market, the position of challenger battling against larger mobile rivals, and the ability to combine purchasing of smartphones and other mobile devices to cut costs in a way that could make quite a difference.”

Pundits anticipate that the offer could trigger a bidding war between Softbank and Dish, although Softbank's initial offer was considered at the time to be a bold and risky move even at that price.

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