
The Dolan family, which controls 74 percent of Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) voting through a unique class of shares, while owning 22.5 percent of stock in the company outright, have made another offer to own them outright.
Last year's bid failed, while this year the family has offered $7.9 billion and assumption of $11.3 billion in debt.
After hearing of the offer and potential deal, Moody's Investors Service have the ratings of the company on review for a possible downgrade. Moody's said in a statement, "Under the proposed transaction, Cablevision's credit metrics would deteriorate meaningfully."
The agency added that before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, debt of the cable operations would increase to about 11 times earnings; up from around the 7 times it currently has.
This high debt load isn't looked upon favorably by analysts because of the increasing competition in the field. The need to invest to increase profits, while holding such a large debt load doesn't look good for the
company if this goes through.
Fitch Ratings said that if the deal goes through, it will lower their rating at least two notches. At this time they're rated at a "B-plus."







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