Comcast’s Cavanagh says ‘bar is very high’ to pursue M&A deals

Asked on the company’s Q3 earnings call about speculation regarding Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD), Comcast (CMCSA) Co-CEO Michael Cavanagh replied: “On media M&A or M&A generally, I mean, I think we’ve said repeatedly, and I’ll say it again, that the bar is very high for us to pursue any M&A transactions given how strongly we feel about the businesses we have, the strategies we’re pursuing, and the opportunities we have ahead of us. That continues to be an important anchor point for how we think about things. Second point I’d make is that you should expect us to look at things that are trading in the space around our industry. It’s our job to try to figure out if there’s ways to add value… I think the strategies we have are really sound and durable without M&A. That said, the question about what’s feasible to get any deals through, obviously the fact that we’ve been taking the path of setting Versant up as our cable network business to pursue strategies that didn’t fit inside the sort of the new NBC media business with great strength in assets and the cash flows they have with light leverage, and that is on track to happen, you can expect that any view we would have about other media assets that could be complementary to our existing media business would be of the same sort. In this case it would be streaming assets and studio assets since there’s no other parks assets out there, and that makes us such a unique company ourselves. I think in light of that, what we’d be looking for and what we’re going to look like post Versant spin, more things are viable than maybe some of the public commentary that’s out there.”