Cablevision: Another Low Ball Bid From The Dolans

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The founding family of Cablevision (CVC), the Dolan clan, are making another run at taking the company private. This time they are offering $36 a share, a 10% premium. The stock price went above their last tow offers as shares in the cable firm are up 70% over the last year.

And, why shouldn’t they go higher. Shares in Charter Communications (CHTR) are up 170% over the same period and Comcast’s (CMCSA) have risen about 35%.

Shares in cable companies continue to benefit from their sales of "triple play" packages that bundle voice, TV and broadband services. Comcast signed up over 500,000 VoIP customers in the last quarter. It believes it will have seven million voice customers by the end of 2009.

Cablevision trades at 1.6 times revenue and Comcast at 3.1x. Cablevision has $12 billion in long-term debt. Comcast has $28 billion.

Hopefully, the Dolans don’t get Cablevision this cheap.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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