Charter Communications dials up over 7% in pre-market as it pours cold water on Sprint bid

Shares in telecoms titan Charter Communications Inc dialled up around 7% in pre-market New York deals as it emerged it had  poured cold water on plans for a merger between it and Sprint Corp (NYSE:S).

Charter shares surged in pre-market, while Sprint shares were up a tad – 0.49%.

It is a plan that Sprint’s majority owner – Japanese giant SoftBank Group Corp is keen to see go through.

On Sunday, reports emerged that SoftBank was considering making an acquisition offer for Charter, which has a market cap of $101bn as early as this week.

But Charter Communications was quick to say the same day that it was not interested in acquiring the US wireless carrier giant.

A merger of the two titans – Charter and Sprint would create a telecomms behemoth, creating a so-called one-stop shop for customers looking for internet and mobile phone services.

Sprint’s market cap is $32.8bn but it also has  a similar amount in debt.

A Charter bid would give SoftBank majority control and would require raising billions of new debt and could push SoftBank to leverage some of its other assets, including its 29.5% stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NASDAQ:BABA) and its 43% in Yahoo Japan Corp.

Story by ProactiveInvestors