AT&T announced yesterday that it would spin off Warner Media in a $43bn (£32bn) transaction to merge its media properties with Discovery and also cut its dividend by nearly half. The deal to unwind AT&T's $85bn purchase of Time Warner was announced early last year, but some financial details were not disclosed until yesterday. "Rather than try to account for market volatility in the near-term and decide where to apportion value in the process of doing an exchange of shares, the spin-off distribution will let the market do what markets do best," AT&T chief exec John Stankey said in a prepared statement. AT&T anticipates spending about $20bn (£15bn) in capex this year to invest more into fiber to the home broadband and its 5G footprint.

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