Latest from Next TV in Leverage

Amazon’s ‘Leverage: Redemption’ Launching on Ion Network

jon.lafayette@futurenet.com (Jon Lafayette) — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 17:00:48 +0000

Leverage: Redemption, an original drama on Amazon’s Freevee streaming channel, has started to run in syndication, making its broadcast debut on E.W. Scripps’s Ion network.

The drama will air on Monday nights on Ion with a double-run starting at 9 p.m. on July 11.

Scripps pitched the show as part of its upfront presentation in the spring.

Amazon brought back Leverage, which ran on TNT from 2008 to 2012. It starred Timothy Hutton as the leader of a group of crooks who team up to get justice for people abused by the government and big business.

The series was revived in 2021 by IMDb TV, which has been renamed Freevee. Leverage Redemption picks up where Leverage left off, with Noah Wyle replacing Hutton as the leader of the team.

In addition to Wyle, Leverage: Redemption stars Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, Beth Riesgraf and Aleyse Shannon with special guest star Aldis Hodge.

Kate Rorick served as co-showrunner and executive producer, alongside co-showrunner and executive producer Dean Devlin, and executive producers Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson of Electric Entertainment. John Rogers and Chris Downey served as consulting producers.

Scripps acquired Ion last year. ■

S&P Global Raises Mediacom Communications Debt Rating

michael.farrell@futurenet.com (Mike Farrell) — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 22:37:47 +0000

S&P Global said Thursday that it has raised its credit rating on Mediacom Communications one notch to BBB+/Stable after the cable company lowered its leverage ratio to 1.4 times EBITDA, and committed to keeping the metric below 2 times for the foreseeable future.

Mediacom previously had a BBB/Stable rating -- which is also considered to be investment grade -- on its debt, and the increase will make it easier for the company to access capital markets at favorable interest rates. S&P Global said Mediacom’s leverage commitment is well below the ratings agency’s BBB rating threshold of 2.5 times EBITDA.

S&P said the "stable" outlook reflects Mediacom’s predictable earnings growth and cash flow generation, which enables the company to lower its leverage by about 0.5 times per year.

S&P said Mediacom has consistently reduced its debt since going private in 2011. While it could beef up its debt in the future, especially if it considers a strategic acquisition, the ratings agency said that the commitment to keeping leverage at 2 times or lower gives it “greater clarity into the limitations on the magnitude of any potential re-leveraging.”

In raising Mediacom’s credit rating, S&P said it believes Mediacom has an affordable network upgrade path to ensure its place as the fastest provider of broadband service in its territories, and that its capital expenditures-to-revenue ratio should remain flat at about 15%.

“Therefore, we expect cash flow conversion rates to continue to improve with higher EBITDA margins supported by solid, albeit moderating, HSD growth,” S&P said, adding that it expects annual broadband EBITDA growth of between 4% and 6% and average revenue per unit (ARPU) growth of 5% to 8% over the next two years. ■

Moody’s: Disney Gets Fox, Comcast Gets Sky Best for Bondholders

Mike Farrell — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 15:34:30 +0000

As the fight over 21st Century Fox assets continues to rage for The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, Moody ‘s Investors Service said Friday that the best outcome for bondholders of all three companies would be for Disney’s cash and stock deal to prevail, with Comcast taking the consolation prize of British satellite TV giant Sky.

Disney's "The Fox Hunt"

Disney has offered $71.3 billion in cash and stock for the Fox assets, besting Comcast’s $65 billion bid. Disney said Thursday that it has scheduled a special meeting July 27 in New York for shareholders to vote on the bid. Comcast is expected to make a higher bid sometime before that date.

Related: Disney Sweetens Fox Deal

In April, Comcast made a separate offer for Sky valuing the company at $31 billion. That offer is still being considered.

Related: Comcast Formalizes Sky Offer

In a research note, Moody’ said that Disney, with a “stronger balance sheet and a commitment to lower leverage,” has a better chance of bringing overall debt back to acceptable levels with its cash and stock offer for Fox.

The credit-rating agency also believes Disney-Fox and Comcast-Sky makes more strategic sense.

Related: DOJ Approves Disney-Fox Deal

“Disney’s ability to monetize intellectual property across all of its lines of business is second-to-none in the industry,” Moody’s wrote. “A Comcast-Sky marriage makes strategic sense because both are pay-TV providers and Comcast is a cable distributor first, content company second.”

Moody’s has already said that a Comcast-Fox combination would create the second most highly leveraged company – behind AT&T-Time Warner – with a $170 billion debt load. And as the bidding goes higher, so does the debtload.

In his report, Moody’s senior vice president Neil Begley estimated if Disney acquired both the Fox assets and Sky, its leverage ratio would be about 4 times forward looking cash flow. With just Fox, leverage ticks down to about 3.5 times. Neither of those figures accounts for any asset divestitures or the planned spin off of Fox’s regional sports networks, which was a condition of federal approval of the deal earlier this week.

“[W]e believe if Disney commits to using all of its free cash flow to reduce debt, avoiding share repurchases or other material debt-financed transactions, it can bring leverage back down to the low-2x range within 24 months of the deal closing,” Begley wrote. “That will give Disney a good chance at maintaining its A2 rating, particularly as it is required for them to sell the RSNs under the DOJ consent for approval, and potentially could sell other assets, which would help achieve that leverage level more quickly.”

Comcast, whose bid is all cash and mainly financed through banks, would see its leverage ration climb to 4.4 times if it bought both the Fox assets and Sky, dropping to 2.9 times in a Sky-only purchase. Moody’s said it believes Comcast could use its free cash flow to take down leverage in a Sky-only deal to about 2.5 times within a year of closing the deal.

“We believe Comcast’s leadership in pay-TV innovation pairs well with Sky’s and Comcast’s expertise in operating an efficient cable distribution network in the US provides less risk when acquiring another cable distribution company, while a company such as Disney has no experience in the distribution of television and broadband connectivity,” Begley wrote. “In addition to the two companies (Comcast & Sky) sharing technology, they can also share non-licensed content, spreading these costs over a larger subscriber base. An acquisition of Sky, with operations in the UK, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Austria and Spain, will also provide Comcast with considerable geographic diversification it does not have.”

Cox Tags Another IoT Tech Partner

Jeff Baumgartner — Wed, 30 May 2018 14:01:19 +0000

Add Leverege, a startup with operations in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, to a growing list of tech partners that are helping to underpin Cox Communications’s new enterprise-focused Internet of Things (IoT) services unit.

Leverege said its software platform is a component of the recently launched Cox2M Connected Asset Services, a unit that is focused on multiple verticals, including transportation, fleet management, smart cities, real estate, retail, as well as energy and agriculture.

RELATED: Cox Banks on IoT

Leverege's platform aims to reduce the complexity of IoT deployments via third-party integrations, 24/7 notification and monitoring tools, and data analytics.

Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim used vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. The solution, piloted last year, connects more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network.

Founded in 2014, Leverege’s other announced partners include Google, Raytheon, Allen Hamilton, and Siren Marine, a company that operates a connected boat platform.

Cox has also announced that CoreKinect, another startup, will provide sensor-based products for Cox2M.

“After an extensive survey of the market, we chose Leverege as our IoT platform partner and system integrator for numerous reasons including modularity and customization of the technology, advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, rapid prototyping tools that greatly accelerate the development of end-to-end IoT solutions, and the world-class team that stands behind the products,” Josh Sommer, executive director of new growth strategy for Cox, said in a statement.

Juenger Downgrades Discovery

Mike Farrell — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 20:45:00 +0000

Influential Sanford Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger lowered his rating on Discovery Communications from “market perform” to “underperform” and changed his entire valuation methodology for the cable network content sector, focusing more on cash flow and debt than earnings.

Juenger has been one of the staunchest critics of the current pay TV content model and said in his report he remains “decidedly negative” on television network stocks for long-term structural reasons like “over-earning” and near term reasons like summertime cord cutting.

“Investors are asking ‘are media stocks cheap enough to own?’ We say ‘no,’ because the balance sheets are still levered as if growth will persist and the future is certain,” Juenger wrote in a note to clients.

Juenger also moved away from common valuation methods for the stocks, like price/earnings (P/E) ratios, and instead will now value shares on an enterprise value to cash flow (EV/EBITDA) basis. The latter, he wrote, is a much better predictor of future performance.

But the new methodology also claimed its first victim – Discovery. In his note, Juenger said the stock trades at low double-digit P/E, but it trades at 11 times EV/EBITDA, which he claims is too high. And instead of reducing leverage, Discovery is adding more debt, he wrote.

Juenger wrote that Discovery has suffered as it has strayed from its brand, creating openings for networks like NatGeo to take up the slack. International revnue growth is decleerating quickly and Juenger belieeves that with 14 networks, Discovery is just too bulky for today's "skinny bundle" universe.

“There are positives and negatives about [Discovery’s] competitive positioning, but as we run through the pros/cons, in the end it wasn't even a close call,” Juenger wrote. “With operating and TV assumptions we feel are more likely generous than punitive, we come to a target price of $23 [per share].”

Discovery shares closed Monday at $28.88 each (up 49 cents or 1.7%). The stock was down 48 cents each, or 1.7%, in early after-hours trading June 6 to $28.40 per share.

Juenger retained his “market perform” rating on CBS and Scripps Networks, adding that while the stocks were “on the bubble,” his target prices for both were about even with their current trading levels.

“If we were making a 2H16 trading call, it would likely be Underperform,” Juenger wrote. “But we are making a 12-month recommendation, and believe CBS and [Scripps Networks] are relative winners among media stocks in the long run, so we retain our Market-perform ratings.”

21st Century Fox was the lone TV stock under his coverage that kept its “outperform” rating, mainly because it holds up better under EV/EBITDA than P/E.

Moody’s Raises Mediacom Credit Ratings

Mike Farrell — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 19:15:00 +0000

Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the credit ratings for privately held cable operator Mediacom Communications, adding that the small-market MSO has improved its leverage ratio substantially since going private in 2011.

Moody’s upgraded Mediacom’s Corporate Family Rating (CFR) to Ba3 from B1 and its Probablility of Default Rating to Ba3-PD from B1-PD. The credit rating agency also changed its outlook on the cable operator to stable from positive.

Improved credit ratings typically mean a company has greater access to cheaper capital.

According to Moody’s, it took the action because Mediacom has lowered its debt-to-cash flow leverage ratio from about 6.7 times in 2011 when it completed plans to go private, to about 5.1 times in September 2014. Moody’s estimated that Mediacom would continue using its free cash flow to pay down debt and could bring that leverage ratio below 5 times this year. Since going private, Moody’s said Mediacom has repaid about $450 million in debt.