07-03-2013, 11:34 PM
Amazing how many new angles they manage to come up with, here is Lebed yesterday after the close:
After last months Cable Show in Washington DC, Liberty Media's CEO sat down with the CEO of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and spoke about Liberty's 27% owned Charter (CHTR) acquiring TWC, a company more than twice its size. Although TWC exploded 19.5% from $96 to a high yesterday of $114.71, they are apparently not interested in a deal like this because the combined company would have a very large amount of debt.
However, with CHTR likely to make other moves - TWC is now looking to make a move of their own and it is rumored that TWC is interested in acquiring Cablevision (CVC), which has gained 27% over the past 5 days from $15 to $19!
Any major consolidation deals involving TWC will be absolutely HUGE for their #1 technology vendor Concurrent (CCUR). TWC uses CCUR's MediaHawk technology to deliver traditional VOD to its 12 million subscribers, and also uses CCUR's Emmy Award winning "Start Over" and "Look Back" technology, with TWC customers voting "Start Over" as their favorite TWC service. Recently, TWC began using CCUR's CDN technology to deliver VOD and linear TV to the tablets and smartphones of their customers.
After CCUR announced the addition to MediaHawk of VOD delivery to Smart TVs, http://www.ccur.com/home/
At a very minimum, if TWC acquired CVC it will likely mean TWC expanding the use of CCUR's technology to provide traditional VOD, multi-screen services, and Start-Over/Look-Back services, to 3.2 million more customers! However, if TWC gets large enough where it is approaching the size of Comcast - I can picture TWC wanting to acquire CCUR and bring all of its technology platforms, patents, and developers 'in-house'! Of course, they would have to pay a HUGE premium!
What started out as major consolidation among TV stations, is now expanding to cable TV operators, and next it will be cable TV tech vendors with CCUR becoming the #1 target, in my opinion:http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/
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