On 6 April AT&T Inc. launched the initial public offering (IPO) of 29.68 million shares of Class A common stock held by Vrio Corp – the holding company for AT&T’s Latin American digital entertainment services units, DirecTV Latin America and SKY Brasil Servicos (Sky Brazil). The IPO price is expected to be between USD19.00 and USD22.00 per share. AT&T notes that Vrio has applied to have its shares approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol ‘VRIO’. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are acting as the joint book-running managers for the IPO, while other book-runners are said to include: BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BTG Pactual, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Itau BBA, Santander, Banco do Brasil Securities, BNP PARIBAS and Bradesco BBI.
In May 2014 AT&T entered into a definitive agreement to acquire US and Latin American satellite TV provider DirecTV in a stock-and-cash transaction with a total equity value of USD48.5 billion, and a total transaction value of USD67.1 billion, including DirecTV’s net debt. The deal was approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in July 2015, and approved shortly thereafter.
DirecTV Latin America – a wholly-owned part of DirecTV Group – comprises operations in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean (including Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Aruba, Curacao and 20 other markets via authorised agents/dealers). Sky Brazil is 93.0%-owned, while the group holds a 41.3% equity method investment in Innova (Sky Mexico). Sky Dominicana (Dominican Republic) and Sky operations in Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama) all fall under the control of Sky Mexico.