Full consolidation of Sky, Home Cable seen this yr

A complete consolidation/combination of market leaders Sky Cable and Home Cable is expected to be finalized within this year.

As envisioned, holding company Beyond Cable will have indirect ownership in Home and Sky through the companies that respectively own them. In effect, Beyond will own 100-percent of Home and 100 percent of Sky, STAR sources explained.

Home Cable is owned by the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) through Mediaquest/Uni-link while Sky Cable is owned by the Lopez group through Sky Vision.

"There are still issues that need to be resolved as far as the combination of Sky and Home is concerned but it will happen, hopefully this year," PLDT president and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said.

He also said that since the talks with the Lopez group are still ongoing, Home Ca-ble has no plans of having any partnership at the mo-ment with Dream Broad-casting, a satellite television company owned by business-man Antonio O. Cojuangco.

STAR sources said that Pangilinan and Cojuangco were already in discussions over a possible partnership between Home and Dream, and probably with ABC 5 which Cojuangco is acqui-ring. However, the same sources explained that this might railroad the ongoing discussions with the Lopez group such that Pangilinan had to drop the planned partnership with Cojuangco.

Pangilinan disclosed yes-terday that aside from valua-tion and other legal issues, the talks between Home and Sky also have to deal with the minority shareholders, whose holdings might be di-luted by the planned combination.

Sky and Home are also nearing agreement with their respective creditors invol-ving the restructuring of a total of P2.6 billion in debts.

Earlier, SkyCable chair-man Eugenio Lopez III said the restructuring is almost done and that the talks will be concluded very soon.

Beyond Cable is currently owned 66.67 percent by the Lopez group and 33.33 per-cent by PLDT. Talks are ongoing with prospective investors for the purchase of half of the Lopez group’s interest in Beyond that at the end of the day, both will own equal shares in the holding company. The prospective investor will be putting in funds into Beyond Cable.

Right now, the merger between Home and Sky un-der Beyond Cable is limited to operational matters. The merger was resorted to by the Lopez group and PLDT to save on redundant expenses and to turn around the business.