The regulatory body has given the go signal for the transaction.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Monday, ABS-CBN Corporation announced that it has received the approval of the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) to sell its broadband business under Sky Cable Corporation to telecoms giant PLDT.
“The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on January 19, 2024, allowed the sale of Sky Cable’s broadband business and related assets to PLDT via the sale of 100% of Sky’s total issued and outstanding capital stock,” ABS-CBN disclosed to the PSE.
The company added: “The proposed transaction is, however, still subject to a number of closing conditions.”
“ABS-CBN will disclose material information to update the disclosure made to the exchange on March 16, 2023, once they become available.”
The deal between ABS-CBN and PLDT will see the former sell its stake on the Sky Cable business to the latter, including the namesake CATV operations, as well as the fiber and home broadband division.
As per the transaction, Sky Cable is worth Php 6.75 billion, with Php 4 billion of that amount going to ABS-CBN Corporation.
ABS-CBN will then reportedly use the money that it will be generating to pay its debts and further invest in its core business in content creation.
Prior to this transaction, ABS-CBN and PLDT subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings in 2022 had initiated a separate deal on Sky Cable.
Whereby, Mediaquest’s Cignal Cable Corporation will acquire 38% of Sky Cable for Php 2.8 billion, with a clause supposedly allowing Cignal to increase its shares in Sky to 61% after 5 years.
However, that deal, along with a related transaction over ABS-CBN’s acquisition of a 35% stake in TV5, were terminated in September 2022 amidst political pressure.
Now that the deal has been given the greenlight, it remains to be seen what will happen to ABS-CBN’s suite of cable channels.
Currently, all, but its news channels ANC and TeleRadyo Serbisyo, are part of Cignal TV’s existing channel line-up.
(Cignal, for its part, also has two news-oriented channels in One News and One PH.)
ABS-CBN has yet to make comments regarding the future of its news channels.
Although, its entertainment offerings like the Kapamilya Channel, Cinema One, Myx, Jeepney TV, and Metro Channel have all been added to Cignal in separate iterations since 2020.