French company Iliad enters battle for T-Mobile US with $15 billion offer

[Himanshu Arora]

Seizing an opening in Sprint and T-Mobile US's failure to announce a deal yet, French telecom operator Iliad has announced its interest in acquiring a controlling stake in the latter company, offering $15 billion in cash for 56.6% of the fourth-largest cellphone operator in the United States.

“The U.S. mobile market is large and attractive”, said Iliad. “T-Mobile has successfully established a disruptive position, which in many respects, is similar to the one Iliad has built in France”.

Founded by Xavier Niel, a billionaire French entrepreneur who also owns newspaper Le Monde, Iliad gained market share in France by offering cheap deals and improved customer service compared to Orange, SFR, and Bouygues, the top three players in the market, where Iliad ranks fourth.

The French mobile-phone carrier has offered $33 a share for the aforementioned stake, adding that the remaining 43.4% of the company would be worth $40.50 a share in such a deal where "synergies" would create $10 billion savings, leading to an overall value for T-Mobile of $36.20 per share.

However, it's still unclear as to how Iliad, who has no presence in the United States, would achieve those savings. Another interesting point worth mentioning is that the French company has market value of $16 billion, while T-Mobile US has a market value of around $25 billion. Iliad said it would finance the offer by raising a combination of debt and equity.

It's highly unlikely that T-Mobile and its shareholders will find the bid attractive, as Sprint is reportedly working on an offer of about $40 a share for the company, but the development could put pressure on the US's third-largest cellphone operator to move sooner rather later.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/57601-french-company-iliad-enters-battle-for-t-mobile-us-with-15-billion-offer.html

 

[RustyTech]

"Seizing an opening in Sprint and T-Mobile US's failure..."

I want to know how this "failure" is measured!?
How can you charge the absorbent amount that you do, not have practically any expenditure, and STILL loose money??
I want to know how companies like Cricket & Republic Wireless, that rent from Sprint, find a way to make money on plans that start at $5 a month (Republic Wireless has this plan)?

I'm calling ALL these wireless carriers bunch of greedy bastards who are just used to lining their pockets to such extremes that anything below a certain level and they consider it loosing money.

 

[mctommy]

"Seizing an opening in Sprint and T-Mobile US's failure..."

I want to know how this "failure" is measured!?
How can you charge the absorbent amount that you do, not have practically any expenditure, and STILL loose money??
I want to know how companies like Cricket & Republic Wireless, that rent from Sprint, find a way to make money on plans that start at $5 a month (Republic Wireless has this plan)?

I'm calling ALL these wireless carriers bunch of greedy bastards who are just used to lining their pockets to such extremes that anything below a certain level and they consider it loosing money.

Did you even read beyond the word failure before firing off on all cylinders?

It says their failure to announce a deal...

 

[RustyTech]

Did you even read beyond the word failure before firing off on all cylinders?

It says their failure to announce a deal...

mctommy, you are correct that the article states the companys' failure in terms of signing the deal. I am however referring to both Sprint's and T-Mobiles constant statements that they are "loosing" money. So I am also speaking of their failures; and imo this article is a good place to bring that up.
I'll be more clear next time.
I am, however, still interested in hearing what others have to say about their business model failure.

 

[mctommy]

Did you even read beyond the word failure before firing off on all cylinders?

It says their failure to announce a deal...

mctommy, you are correct that the article states the companys' failure in terms of signing the deal. I am however referring to both Sprint's and T-Mobiles constant statements that they are "loosing" money. So I am also speaking of their failures; and imo this article is a good place to bring that up.
I'll be more clear next time.
I am, however, still interested in hearing what others have to say about their business model failure.

They are both losing money for very different reasons.

Sprint: has actually turned a profit for Q2 2014 but they've been bleeding customers for the last several years.

T-Mobile: has been losing money but has gained lots of customers due to their uncarrier moves since Q2 of 2013. They have spent a lot of money to get those customers (pay ETF, lower prices, international roaming, etc...). They added 4.2 million customers in 2013, 2.5 in Q1 2014, 1.5 in Q2 2014.

I don't agree with your statement that there are no expenditures. As far as wireless companies go, you have office leases, workforce, tower leases (those towers are going on someone's land and you have to pay them), tower maintenance, LTE upgrades (that goes for both of them and in the tunes of billions), wireless spectrum purchases, marketing, etc... LTE upgrades have been going on for both of them since last year, albeit T-Mobile has been faster and more efficient in deploying it vs. Sprint Sparks network.

Also unlike your MVNO, the big 4 and some of the regional carriers have a lot more expenditures because they have to pay for tower construction/lease, equipment deployment and upgrades, renting the hardline from those towers back to their system, etc... MVNO just pay the wireless for the access without incurring those kind of expenses.

Another point that I would make is that the US is a very very different animal compare to Japan or Europe because of the size of the country. Where you can blanket many people in Japan and Europe with less towers, you can't do that in the US due to the sheer size of country. This creates a bigger burden for them because they need to install more equipment on more towers than their Japanese and European counterpart.

Lastly, you have to remember Sprint & T-Mobile don't have the same competitive advantage as Verizon and AT&T in that their are "only" wireless carriers when the other two has a phone and internet services as a form of revenue, customers and assets (they can rent those lines out to other telecom company).

 

[RustyTech]

mctommy....I salute you sir!
Your post is insightful

 

[havok585]

Did you even read beyond the word failure before firing off on all cylinders?

It says their failure to announce a deal...

mctommy, you are correct that the article states the companys' failure in terms of signing the deal. I am however referring to both Sprint's and T-Mobiles constant statements that they are "loosing" money. So I am also speaking of their failures; and imo this article is a good place to bring that up.
I'll be more clear next time.
I am, however, still interested in hearing what others have to say about their business model failure.

They are both losing money for very different reasons.

Sprint: has actually turned a profit for Q2 2014 but they've been bleeding customers for the last several years.

T-Mobile: has been losing money but has gained lots of customers due to their uncarrier moves since Q2 of 2013. They have spent a lot of money to get those customers (pay ETF, lower prices, international roaming, etc...). They added 4.2 million customers in 2013, 2.5 in Q1 2014, 1.5 in Q2 2014.

I don't agree with your statement that there are no expenditures. As far as wireless companies go, you have office leases, workforce, tower leases (those towers are going on someone's land and you have to pay them), tower maintenance, LTE upgrades (that goes for both of them and in the tunes of billions), wireless spectrum purchases, marketing, etc... LTE upgrades have been going on for both of them since last year, albeit T-Mobile has been faster and more efficient in deploying it vs. Sprint Sparks network.

Also unlike your MVNO, the big 4 and some of the regional carriers have a lot more expenditures because they have to pay for tower construction/lease, equipment deployment and upgrades, renting the hardline from those towers back to their system, etc... MVNO just pay the wireless for the access without incurring those kind of expenses.

Another point that I would make is that the US is a very very different animal compare to Japan or Europe because of the size of the country. Where you can blanket many people in Japan and Europe with less towers, you can't do that in the US due to the sheer size of country. This creates a bigger burden for them because they need to install more equipment on more towers than their Japanese and European counterpart.

Lastly, you have to remember Sprint & T-Mobile don't have the same competitive advantage as Verizon and AT&T in that their are "only" wireless carriers when the other two has a phone and internet services as a form of revenue, customers and assets (they can rent those lines out to other telecom company).

You put Europe and Japan together regarding size? Japan yea, but Europe is bigger than US (10.1 mill KM² compared to US 9.9 mill). Also Europe is not a country, u implied it is.

 

[mctommy]

Did you even read beyond the word failure before firing off on all cylinders?

It says their failure to announce a deal...

mctommy, you are correct that the article states the companys' failure in terms of signing the deal. I am however referring to both Sprint's and T-Mobiles constant statements that they are "loosing" money. So I am also speaking of their failures; and imo this article is a good place to bring that up.
I'll be more clear next time.
I am, however, still interested in hearing what others have to say about their business model failure.

They are both losing money for very different reasons.

Sprint: has actually turned a profit for Q2 2014 but they've been bleeding customers for the last several years.

T-Mobile: has been losing money but has gained lots of customers due to their uncarrier moves since Q2 of 2013. They have spent a lot of money to get those customers (pay ETF, lower prices, international roaming, etc...). They added 4.2 million customers in 2013, 2.5 in Q1 2014, 1.5 in Q2 2014.

I don't agree with your statement that there are no expenditures. As far as wireless companies go, you have office leases, workforce, tower leases (those towers are going on someone's land and you have to pay them), tower maintenance, LTE upgrades (that goes for both of them and in the tunes of billions), wireless spectrum purchases, marketing, etc... LTE upgrades have been going on for both of them since last year, albeit T-Mobile has been faster and more efficient in deploying it vs. Sprint Sparks network.

Also unlike your MVNO, the big 4 and some of the regional carriers have a lot more expenditures because they have to pay for tower construction/lease, equipment deployment and upgrades, renting the hardline from those towers back to their system, etc... MVNO just pay the wireless for the access without incurring those kind of expenses.

Another point that I would make is that the US is a very very different animal compare to Japan or Europe because of the size of the country. Where you can blanket many people in Japan and Europe with less towers, you can't do that in the US due to the sheer size of country. This creates a bigger burden for them because they need to install more equipment on more towers than their Japanese and European counterpart.

Lastly, you have to remember Sprint & T-Mobile don't have the same competitive advantage as Verizon and AT&T in that their are "only" wireless carriers when the other two has a phone and internet services as a form of revenue, customers and assets (they can rent those lines out to other telecom company).

You put Europe and Japan together regarding size? Japan yea, but Europe is bigger than US (10.1 mill KM² compared to US 9.9 mill). Also Europe is not a country, u implied it is.

Do you think I'm an ***** or something? Europe a country? Did you have to look at a wiki to pull those numbers?

I bundled "Europe" in general because many of the countries in Europe are either the same size of Japan or smaller (except for Spain, France and Sweden)... hence why it's easier for a wireless company to cover their country with cell towers.