Time Warner Cable, the second biggest cable television company in the United States after Comcast, is near a deal to acquire Insight Communications, a large operator in the Midwest, for about $3 billion, a person with knowledge of the deal said on Sunday night.
It would be Time Warner Cable’s biggest acquisition since 2006, when it and Comcast picked up the assets of Adelphia, a bankrupt cable television company.
The deal is expected to be announced on Monday, said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not been made public.
The acquisition highlights Time Warner Cable’s confidence in the cable subscription business at a time when cable companies are losing customers to telecommunications companies like Verizon, and when other customers are contemplating cutting the cord and consuming video online instead.
Insight provides cable, broadband and phone services in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. Some of its locations complement Time Warner Cable’s operations; the two serve different parts of Columbus, Ohio, for example.
Time Warner Cable has about 12 million cable customers. The deal for Insight, the ninth largest cable operator in the country, will give Time Warner Cable an additional 680,000 cable customers.
A representative for Time Warner Cable declined to comment on Sunday night, while representatives for Insight did not respond to requests for comment. The impending deal was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Insight is owned by the Carlyle Group and other private equity firms.
When it was put up for sale this year, its owners sought $3.5 billion to $4 billion; Time Warner Cable was said to be unwilling to pay that much for the company. A spokesman for Carlyle declined to comment on Sunday.
In June, Time Warner Cable paid $260 million to acquire assets from NewWave Communications, a cable company based in Missouri with 70,000 cable subscribers. On a conference call with Wall Street analysts last month, the Time Warner Cable chief executive, Glenn Britt, said the company was “interested in extending our cable footprint” when “we can do so at the right price.”
Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a09532e0f3d50fa3e6076f34c998c769
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