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Marcus Cable mulls sale
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March 3, 1998: 10:34 a.m. ET
Privately held cable firm could fetch $3 billion in current seller's market
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The largest privately held cable company in the United States, Marcus Cable Co., reportedly is putting itself up for sale and could come with a price tag of $3 billion.
According to the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, Marcus founder and CEO Jeff Marcus has retained the services of Goldman Sachs & Co. to look into selling the company.
Marcus took a more active stance after receiving two unsolicited buyout offers. He wouldn't identify the bidders, but one of them was Tele-Communications Inc. (TCOMA), the Journal said.
Marcus is the nation's ninth-largest cable company overall and has about 1.1 million subscribers.
The company is looking for an offer of about $3 billion and may get it, since it's currently a seller's market for cable firms. There are limited buying opportunities as cable firms look to grow and companies that are mulling a sale can demand about $2,000 to $2,500 per subscriber.
It's the lure of those high prices that enticed Marcus and his partners, most of which are investment companies. Besides Goldman Sachs, they include Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, Freeman Spogli & Co., Greenwich Street Capital Partners, Weiss, Peck & Greer, First Union Capital Partners and the Wisconsin Investment Board.
Marcus told the Journal that the company hasn't made any firm decisions on whether it will sell itself as a whole unit or divide up its assets among its different markets, which include Indiana, California, Alabama, Wisconsin and Texas.
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Marcus Cable
TCI
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