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06/22/2017
Altice USA Rises in Debut After Second-Biggest 2017 U.S. IPO
Billionaire Patrick Drahi’s Altice USA Inc. climbed in its trading debut after raising $1.9 billion in the second-biggest U.S. initial public offering of the year.
The stock opened at $31.60 and was up 5.4 percent at $31.63 at 11:36 a.m. in New York. Altice USA and some existing shareholders sold 63.9 million shares for $30 apiece, within the marketed price range of $27 to $31 each. The company increased the size of the deal Wednesday afternoon, as Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and BC Partners boosted the number of shares they planned to sell in the offering, according to a filing.
Altice USA plans to use the new money raised in the IPO for acquisitions, following in the footsteps of its parent company. Drahi, 53, is a well-known figure in the global M&A market, having spent the past few decades amassing a cable empire across Europe and the U.S.
“We’ll look at everything,” Dexter Goei, chief executive officer of Altice USA, said of potential acquisitions in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
“But we like what we have, so Altice USA is focused on cable, likes cable. I think we’d really like the opportunity to have more cable if that was possible. If that’s not possible we’ll look at other things.”
Watch the full interview with Altice USA chief executive Dexter Goei here.
