Scimitar said:
Ag13 said:
Apologies if this article was discussed yesterday but I am having trouble comprehending why a Comcast acquisition of Roku makes sense for either side.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/comcasts-ceo-built-a-cable-giant-can-he-build-a-streaming-giant-11624473722
I haven't run the numbers, so please know I'm only speaking in generalities and I may mention things you already know, for the sake of others that don't.
When a deal is announced, or considered, analysts and bankers talk in terms of it being accretive (adding overall, value) or dilutive (taking away overall value). Simply put, does 1+1=3 or 1.5?
With more folks moving to streaming, an internet company could try to capture both sides of the home entertainment industry. AT&T tried that with DirecTv but failedand are now selling the latter. Perhaps Comcast feels like it has better prospects since they are an internet provider already and have a "free" box ala Apple TV they give to their internet only customers.
And then there is the unspoken reason why deals are made. Cash out a startup that is a legitimate threat by acquiring them and then put them out to pasture where they can cause no more mischief after taking whatever of value they have.
Thanks for this. Just not buying that this kind of vertical integration would provide a great value to Comcast especially when talking about a ROKU market cap of $55B (and they would likely need to pay a lot more to actually acquire them). I actually think Peacock is a great app with good content. It mentions in the article the Comcast is also looking at acquiring/merging with ViacomCBS. Regulatory issues aside, acquiring content seems to be the name of the game in the streaming wars right now. If you build the content, they will come. If you buy ROKU and force "ok" content on people, people will get annoyed.
And on the ROKU side, they get a large portion of value (at least they have historically) from trying to be the independent player in the streaming wars. Comcast acquiring and having a preferred app (Peacock) could significantly impair that. I realize that ROKU has their own ad supported streaming service now, but at this point it's not a competitor to the major ones (including Peacock). So IMO ROKU has a lot more room to run as an independent company vs being acquired by a legacy media company purely for distribution reasons.
If this acquisition were to happen it would be somewhat ironic given that ROKU was a spinoff of Netflix back in the day.