AT&T won’t have to worry about Apple trying to outflank its bid for Time Warner.
Apple has no plans currently to make an offer for Time Warner, CNBC’s David Faber said on the network’s Squawk on the Street show on Wednesday.
“It’s not interested. Apple is not interested,” said Faber, citing people who claim to have knowledge of Apple’s (AAPL) internal discussion. “Anybody expecting an overbid from Apple at this point, certainly, it is not coming.”
AT&T late last month agreed to acquire Time Warner—home to a slew of popular media properties including HBO, CNN, and film studio Warner Bros—for $85.4 billion, or $107.50 per share. The deal is expected to face intense regulatory scrutiny in the coming months. Although AT&T believes it can get it through regulatory hurdles, some industry analysts say it could face some challenges as competition agencies get a chance to review it.
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Rumors have been swirling for about a year that Apple was also considering a Time Warner (TWX) buyout. In January, the New York Post reported that Apple senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue was keeping an eye on Time Warner. The report, which cited unidentified sources, reasoned that Apple was interested in acquiring content for its broader efforts in streaming video, and buying Time Warner could help it achieve that.
Soon after, however, reports surfaced saying that Apple had considered a Time Warner buy in 2015 but the discussion didn’t go far and the idea was eventually shelved by the company’s top executives. The report suggested Apple had turned its attention to streaming-video giant Netflix (NFLX).
In an interview last month, AT&T (T) CEO Randall Stephenson said his company was the only one to bid for Time Warner.
Apple hasn’t signaled any clear desire to buy a content company, let alone a other firm worth tens of billions of dollars. Apple, which grew its cash reserves to $237.6 billion in its last fiscal quarter, has said that it would consider acquisitions of any size, as long as they make sense for its business. While Apple has made several acquisitions in 2016, they’ve largely been relatively small acquisitions that Apple often times won’t even announce.
For now, then, and perhaps forever, an Apple-Time Warner acquisition is out the question.
For more about AT&T’s Time Warner bid, watch:
Apple did not respond to a Coins2Day request for comment.
