The private-equity owners of WaveDivision Holdings, parent company of Washington-based cable company Wave Broadband, are reportedly looking to sell the company for more than USD2 billion. According to Reuters, citing ‘people familiar with the matter’, buyout firms Oak Hill Capital Management and GI Partners – which jointly own Wave, along with CEO Steve Weed – have hired investment bank UBS Group to explore sale options. The owners paid roughly USD950 million for the cableco in 2012, when they acquired it from Sandler Capital Management.
Earlier this month Wave announced that it had acquired Seattle-based ISP Cascadelink, which delivers broadband connectivity to residential and commercial customers in multiple dwelling unit (MDU) residential and office buildings throughout the Seattle area. TeleGeography notes that the transaction represents the latest in a long line of ‘bolt-on’ deals for Wave, with previous acquisitions including: Spectrum Networks and CondoInternet (September 2013), ReallyFast.net (April 2015) Layer 42 Networks (September 2015), CoastCom and SawNet (both September 2016) and Cascade Networks (January 2017).
Wave Broadband offers residential and commercial cable TV, broadband and voice services to customers in the Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco and Portland markets. The cableco claims to serve 455,000 subscribers across 140 cities.