Dish Network acquired Boost Mobile in a transaction that was related to T-Mobile’s $26 billion purchase of Sprint which closed in 2020. During the roughly two years that it took regulatory agencies like the FCC and the DOJ to sign off on the deal, Dish Network was named by the FCC to be the “fourth nationwide facilities-based network competitor” to replace Sprint. In other words, the U.S. government wanted to make sure that another company would replace Sprint to keep the number of major stateside wireless providers at four.
Dish is looking to sell Boost Mobile to a company created by Chairman Charles Ergen
Dish is looking to sell service under the Boost Infinite name later this year
As part of an agreement with T-Mobile and the FCC, Dish bought Sprint’s pre-paid offerings such as Boost Mobile in a transaction valued at $5 billion. The deal gave Dish 9.3 million pre-paid customers living in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The Pay-TV firm also took over 400 employees and 7,500 retail stores along with 14MHz of Sprint’s low-band 800MHz spectrum. Since starting operations, Dish has seen more than 1.3 million customers leave and it now has fewer than 8 million subscribers.
In the filing, the Ergen-controlled company wrote “The Company has begun preliminary discussions with DISH Network Corp. regarding a potential initial business combination involving DISH’s retail wireless business. The Company expects to announce additional details regarding the potential business combination if and when a definitive agreement is executed.”
Analyst’s report says that completing this deal could increase the odds of success for Boost
Telecom research firm New Street thinks that having the SPAC acquire Boost could help it thrive. A New Street analyst wrote that “Giving Boost capital to grow through this structure increases the odds they will be successful which in turn increases the prospects for the success of networks. Though splitting off Boost cuts Dish off from an easy source of cash flows, it should improve visibility into the margin profile of the underlying network infrastructure business; this could in turn improve Dish’s access to capital.”
The report, written to New Street customers yesterday, says, “Boost will become the anchor tenant on Dish’s network as it gets built out. With little more than growth in MVNO payments from Boost, Dish’s fully deployed network will nearly break even; any additional wholesale or enterprise revenues would be gravy.”
