This week AT&T’s CFO Pascal Desroches spoke at the Bank of America C-Suite Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Conference in London. During that talk, he opened up about how AT&T and how DIRECTV is doing.
During the talk, when asked about a possible DIRECTV and Dish merger, he opened up about how well DIRECTV is doing for AT&T. During that answer, he gave us an idea of how much AT&T is making from the newly independent but still majority owned by AT&T DIRECTV company.
“Last year, it produced $4.5 billion for us. This year, we got it at around $3.5 billion. We have really good line of sight over the next several years as to what cash flows will come out of that business. And whatever we would do would have to be incrementally much better than that.” Said AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter.
If you want to learn more about what he said about a possible DIRECTV and Dish merger find our full coverage HERE.
What is interesting here is AT&T expects DIRECTV to still be profitable for the next few years. AT&T can use that money to help pay off its debt. From the sounds of it anything AT&T does with DIRECTV will need to bring in that same amount of money or more.
The question now is, what does this mean for the future of DIRECTV. That is unknown, but it is clear that DIRECTV will continue just like it is as long as AT&T thinks that is the most profitable thing they can do.
For cord cutters, the bigger question is what will happen to DIRECTV STREAM and Sling TV if the two companies merge. For the cable TV industry, the bigger question may be what happens if DIRECTV and Dish fail to merge. For now, we will have to wait and see what AT&T does or if they are happy just getting the money they can from the company.