Telefonica this week named itself as the most likely buyer for AT&T’s newly-acquired Brazilian pay TV assets, should the U.S. telco seek to sell.
Two senior executives at the Spanish operator indicated that an acquisition of Sky Brasil could be on the cards in an inte rview with Bloomberg.
The newswire quoted Telefonica Brasil’s CEO Amos Genish as saying that Sky Brasil’s business could be complementary to his own, while finance chief Alberto Horcajo Aguirre went as far as to say that Telefonica is "the only possible buyer" for the asset.
AT&T acquired Sky Brasil as part of its US$48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV in July. The U.S. operator has made it clear that it sees a real opportunity in Mexico – where it has acquired mobile operators Iusacell and Nextel, in addition to DirecTV’s holding in Sky Mexico – but there has been speculation regarding its other assets in the Latin American region.
There has been no indication from AT&T that it is looking to sell the Brazilian business, but such a move would not come as a surprise.
According to Aguirre, the only companies in the running for Sky Brasil would be Telefonica and local player Oi, but Oi "doesn’t have the fire power", he told Bloomberg.
America Movil’s Net is the leading pay TV provider in Brazil and the size of its market share would preclude it from buying Sky, the newswire pointed out.
In a separate interview, Bloomberg spoke to Rodrigo Abreu, chief executive of TIM Brasil, who indicated that a merger between TIM and Sky would not make strategic sense.
TIM has been at the centre of M&A speculation in Brazil for the past couple of years and many believe the Telecom Italia unit is still ripe for a takeover, being the only one of the country’s big four mobile operators to lack a fixed broadband arm of any scale.
Abreu reiterated to Bloomberg that the company is "not aggressively pursuing consolidation as a strategy," but his comments are unlikely to quiet Brazilian M&A talk in the near term.
