AT&T explores sale of Xandr unit to cut debt
AT&T’s Chief Executive Officer John Stankey continues to look to slim down the telecom and entertainment giant as the coronavirus slams its businesses, NY Post reports. at&t selling xandr
The telecom company that also owns HBO is in early talks to sell a digital advertising unit that it bought for $1.6 billion in 2018, The Wall Street Journal said, adding that the telecom is expected to fetch no more than $1.6 billion for Xandr.
The news follows reports that AT&T is also shopping its ailing pay TV business, DirecTV, which it bought in 2015 for $49 billion.
The parent to Hollywood’s Warner Bros. Studios declined to comment.
For the last two years, AT&T, which entered the second half of 2020 with $152 million in debt, has touted Xandr as central to its plan to challenge heavyweights such as Alphabet’s Google for a piece of the multibillion-dollar digital ad marketplace. AT&T had been positioning Xandr as the linchpin of its efforts to build an advanced TV advertising business as the medium moved online to streaming services.
But the pandemic has squeezed AT&T’s advertising and entertainment businesses, cutting into its second-quarter earnings by $830 million.
With ad spend sharply down across the industry, AT&T folded Xandr into its WarnerMedia unit in April, and more recently began reorganizing the entertainment arm and its all-important streaming service HBO Max, which it launched on May 27.
AT&T to scrap sale of Warner Bros. video-game unit
AT&T Inc. has removed its Warner Bros. video-game business from the list of noncore assets up for sale, deciding it was too valuable to unload during its effort to pay down debt and streamline, according to people familiar with the situation.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, the gaming unit that is home to titles like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Mortal Kombat 11, had attracted interest from several major companies and could have reaped US$4 billion, as reported by CNBC in June. But AT&T balked given the business’s growth potential, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is private.
AT&T began working with LionTree Advisors earlier this year to explore a potential sale of the business, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. AT&T declined to comment.
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