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Technology Stocks : Primestar/TCI Satellite (TSATA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Noel who wrote (209)	1/21/1999 6:49:00 PM
From: Snake	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 442

I agree with you 100% here. Reports I have seen, which relevant parts are below tag Primestar debt at about $1.7-$1.9 Billion. TSATA shareholders will only get 37% of anything greater than that divided 60 million shares. You have a pretty good argument that this thing was fairly valued a few weeks ago. Primestar is carrying about $1.9 billion in debt, or about $750 a subscriber, said Armand Musey, an analyst with C.E. Unterberg, Towbin. That debt load makes it unlikely that any buyer would purchase the company outright, analysts said. 'The only thing that is getting any type of interest here is some kind of deal where subscribers are purchased on a converted basis,'' said Stephen Blum,president of Tellus Venture Associates. PrimeStar's debt, churn and cost of conversion to high power makes an all out acquisition, at current levels, prohibitively expensive. According to ING, with total subscribers numbering 2.3 million, and debt at $1.7 billion, debt per-sub would be $739. The estimated conversion cost for each sub was estimated at around $500. When adding in debt plus sub conversion figures, total per-sub costs are at around $1,239.