A&E has spent the last few years cultivating a reality TV lineup that includes such gems as Storage Wars and Intervention. The cable channel's sister networks include Lifetime, which has also been pushing in a new direction, History and H2, which have been working it on Top Tuesdays especially, and Military History, which I know can suck my brother in for hours at a time. Taken as a whole, the A&E television networks (some of which were not mentioned prior), have really been working to increase brand recognition and loyalty and bring in more viewers. So, when NBCUniversal decided to sell its minority stakehold in the company during a time of growth, the move may have seemed a little surprising, but ultimately is proving a boon to Comcast’s stock shares.
There are a lot of facts and figures that go into selling a stakeholding position in any company, but the most important number related to NBCUniversal’s big sale is $3.03 billion. That number is for a 15.8% stake in the A&E Television networks that, according to The Wall Street Journal will be pieced out to other stakeholders, including the Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation.
Selling the shares is all good and well, but can we talk about the $3.03 billion dollars NBCUniversal and Comcast in extension are earning in cash from this deal? If 15.8% of a company is going for that much money, the implication is that A&E and its sister networks are worth close to $20 billion dollars in total. Since the article also notes A&E Television networks rank fourth in total primetime viewers, following Viacom Incorporated, Time Warner incorporated, and NBCUniversal, the numbers involved in the sell are extremely relevant because they can help TV viewers to gauge exactly how much some of the big companies are worth. I'm still not certain who got the best end of today's deal, but all in all, the numbers are impressive.
