Comcast exploring spinning cable networks into ‘new well capitalized company’

Comcast (CMCSA) President Mike Cavanagh stated on the company’s Q3 earnings call, according to a transcript of the event: “While we remain most focused on driving our growth businesses, we also look to maximize the significant legacy value in our portfolio of more mature businesses. As you know, we chose not to participate in the M&A process around Paramount (PARA) in the earlier part of this year. But we would consider partnerships and streaming despite their complexities and like many of our peers in media, we are experiencing the effects of the transition in our video businesses and have been studying the best path forward for these assets. To that end, we are now exploring whether creating a new well capitalized company owned by our shareholders and comprised of our strong portfolio of cable networks would position them to take advantage of opportunities in the changing media landscape and create value for our shareholders. We are not ready to talk about any specifics yet, but we’ll be back to you as and when we reached firm conclusions. And to sum it up, we are very proud of the job we’ve done on the capital allocation front over the past few years, and we are highly motivated to maintain the same level of discipline.”