The initial public offering (IPO) of cable operator Altice USA surpassed expectations this week, offering more shares than expected and raising more money than any other telecom offering in nearly two decades.
Altice on Wednesday announced an offer of 63,943,029 shares of Class A common stock at a cost of $30 per share. The number of shares was significantly higher than the 46.6 million shares the company originally planned to offer, reflecting demand for the IPO. The final price was also at the high end of the $27 to $31 range the company announced earlier this month. Altice itself is set to offload around 12 million of those shares, meaning it’ll get to pocket about $330 million after expenses.
Altice’s shares were set to begin trading Thursday under the symbol “ATUS.”
All told, Altice stands to raise $1.9 billion with the move, a figure the Wall Street Journal noted was the “biggest U.S.-listed telecom IPO in roughly 17 years.” It should be noted, however, that only one other U.S. cable company has had an IPO in the past five years. That would be WideOpenWest (also known as WOW!), which launched a lackluster offer of 19 million shares at between $20 to $22 for a total of around $310 million last month.
Altice wrapped up its acquisitions of cable operators Suddenlink in 2015 and Cablevision last year, making it the fourth-largest stateside cable operator. The company serves more than 4.9 million subscribers across 21 states.
