Time Warner Cable announced this morning that it had wrapped up its $3 billion cash deal to buy Insight Communications.
With Insight into the fold, Time Warner Cable added more than more than 760,000 Insight customers in Evansville, Indiana; Louisville, Covington, Lexington, and Bowling Green, Kentucky; and Columbus, Ohio.
Time Warner Cable said the acquisition included “technologically advanced systems” serving approximately 550,000 high-speed data, 670,000 video and 290,000 voice subscribers
The deal, which featured the nation’s second-largest cable-operator buying up the ninth largest, was first announced in August of last year.
“Today we are pleased to welcome new customers, new employees and new communities to Time Warner Cable,” said Glenn Britt, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable. “With this acquisition, we have expanded in areas that fit well with our Midwest operations at an attractive price. We are excited to begin building on Insight’s successes and serving our new customers.”
When the agreement was first announced last year, Time Warner Cable said the purchase would create annual cost efficiencies of approximately $100 million through programming expense savings and other cost reductions.
Led by co-founder, vice chairman and CEO Michael Willner, who was inducted into the Cable Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2005, Insight was also attractive to Time Warner Cable because it had already invested in whole-home DVR offerings, all-digital conversions and DOCSIS 3.0 deployments.
Prior to the transaction, Insight was owned by The Carlyle Group, Crestview Partners, MidOcean Partners, members of Insight management and others. Carlyle and Insight management took the company private in 2005, and Crestview and MidOcean purchased a significant stake in the company in 2010.
Also last year, Time Warner Cable paid $260 million for NewWave Communications, which included systems in Kentucky and western Tennessee.
Prior to those deals, Time Warner Cable’s last major acquisition was in 2006 when it split up the former Adelphia systems with Comcast.