Virtual entertainment company FaceBank's buy of vMVPD fuboTV (see personals section, this issue) should conclude in Q1, FaceBank said Monday. It will adopt the fuboTV name. In an SEC filing, FaceBank said it secured a $100 million loan for the deal.
Silicon Labs agreed to buy Redpine Signals’ connectivity business, including its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth assets, development center and patent portfolio, for $308 million in cash, it said Thursday. Integration of Redpine technology will accelerate Silicon Labs’ work on Wi-Fi 6 silicon, software and solutions, said the company. The acquisition also includes Bluetooth Classic IP (including Extended Data Rate) for audio applications including wearables, hearables, voice assistants and smart speakers. The deal includes an at-scale design center with about 200 employees in Hyderabad, India. Silicon Labs expects the transaction to add about $20 million in incremental revenue on an annualized basis for fiscal 2020; the deal is expected to close in Q2.
Many vertical acquisitions are good for competition or at least neutral, but the wrong vertical one "can create and entrench monopolists" and that risk is higher in digital markets where vertically integrated platforms have access to data needed by potential rivals, said DOJ antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim Wednesday at a vertical mergers guidelines workshop, per prepared remarks. He said if important data is available only to a downstream service due to an acquisition, that might increase the ability to raise rivals' downstream costs. He said the AT&T/Time Warner decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was "a significant development" in making clear that Section 7 of the Clayton Act governs an anti-competitive acquisition. He called that important because Section 7 looks to possible future effects and lets DOJ act before a problem arises.
California Public Utilities Commissioners won’t decide T-Mobile buying Sprint sooner, Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer ruled Thursday. The carriers wanted to close April 1. The ALJ denied the carriers' four motions to shorten typical CPUC procedural time frames and reconsider Bemesderfer’s Feb. 24 ruling that the agency may vote April 16 (see 2003040024). The companies didn’t comment.
Seeking California clearance of T-Mobile's buying Sprint by March 26, the carriers asked the Public Utilities Commission to trim the agency’s usual timelines. An administrative law judge ruled last week the CPUC may vote April 16, after a proposed decision March 13 (see 2002240053). “The companies have publicly announced their intention to close the merger on April 1," so the CPUC should reconsider the ALJ ruling and determine it will come up at the March 26 meeting, the carriers said in docket A.18-07-011. Other motions are here, here and here.
Antitrust authorities won't challenge Spotify’s acquisition of the Bill Simmons Media Group, said a Monday FTC notice released Tuesday. Spotify agreed last month to acquire Simmons’ The Ringer (see 2002050023), a website, podcast network and scripted and non-scripted video production house delivering sports, pop culture, politics and tech content.
Boingo Wireless won’t comment on “rumors or speculation” that it’s putting itself up for sale, but “we can share that we have received multiple inquiries regarding a potential strategic transaction,” said CEO Mike Finley on a Q4 call Monday. Boingo’s board hired strategic advisers “to help us assess these opportunities,” so it's suspending 2020 forecasts “until further notice,” he said. Boingo's Wi-Fi offload services are "an important way that we partner with the carriers to help solve the insatiable growth of mobile data traffic," said Finley. "We remain confident that it is not a question of if, but when, every domestic carrier is participating in some form of offload to ease congestion on their cellular networks." Shares closed 18% higher Tuesday at $14.04.
Recent mergers and acquisitions involving very small aperture terminals should mean the companies are better positioned for the technology development needed for 5G, non-geostationary orbit constellations and very high-throughput satellites, Northern Sky Research analyst Lluc Palerm blogged Monday. He said the trend of a single VSAT platform for a high-throughput satellite payload means those earth station vendors need scale and financial health.
Gray Television will get a minority interest in Tegna’s over-the-top advertising platform Premion and resell the services in all 93 Gray markets, the companies said Wednesday. “The Premion business exceeded $100 million in revenue in 2019, and we expect double-digit growth rates,” said Tegna CEO Dave Lougee.
Comcast bought advertising-supported streaming service Xumo, which will operate as an independent business as part of Comcast Cable, the MVPD said Tuesday.