Altice on Thursday launched a capital raising worth €1.8 billion to fund its planned takeover of Cablevision.
The French firm also priced US$8.6 billion (€7.7 billion) of new debt in connection with the U.S. cable acquisition.
Altice announced it had agreed a $17.7 billion deal to acquire Cablevision in mid-September. At the time it said it would fund the transaction through $14.5 billion of new and existing debt at Cablevision and $3.3 billion in cash from Altice, which it would raise by issuing new shares.
The Cablevision deal marked the second step in Altice’s U.S. growth plan, but it will not necessarily be the last.
Altice announced its entry into the U.S. market in May with an agreement to acquire Suddenlink for $9.1 billion.
Having committed to a sizeable spend through those two transactions, Altice CEO Dexter Goei last week told Bloomberg the company is pausing its expansion plan to ease the burden on investors, but indicated that it could reverse that decision if privately-held cable operator Cox Communications were to become available.
The addition of Cox to its portfolio would make Altice the third-largest cable outfit in the U.S by subscribers, with around 10.6 million customers.
In the meantime though, it will have to settle for being number four; Cablevision and Suddenlink together have 4.6 million customers.
