Company profile
- Industry
- Telecommunications
- Headquarters
- Dallas, United States
- Ownership
- Publicly traded
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
The analyses
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
AT&T Spent $100 Billion to Become a Media Company. It Lasted Four Years.
AT&T paid a court-documented $100.3 billion for Time Warner, held it for under four years, and got $40.4 billion in cash at the exit. The losing trade wasn't content versus distribution. It was buying two cyclical peaks with debt that left no margin for being wrong.
8 min
The Reversal · Decision Forks
AT&T Bought DirecTV and Time Warner, Unwound Both, and Kept $156 Billion in Net Debt
AT&T spent $67.1 billion on DirecTV and $108.7 billion on Time Warner, then unwound both within a decade. The 'pivot back to connectivity' is the flattering version. The honest one: it bought its way to $156 billion in net debt and called the surrender a strategy.
8 min
The Fall · Decision Forks
AT&T Spent ~$167 Billion to Become a Media Company. It Exited for a Fraction and Called It a Pivot.
AT&T paid ~$106 billion for Time Warner and ~$67 billion for DirecTV, then exited both for a fraction—a $15.5B video write-down in 2020, ~$43B for WarnerMedia in 2022, and debt peaking at ~$177B. This wasn't a pivot. It was arithmetic.
8 min