Sprint/T-Mobile US merger set for a $3 billion boost

It looks like Sprint could trouser up to three billion bucks when it flogs its prepaid subsidiary Boost in a bid to placate antitrust authorities.

The Sprint/T-Mobile US merger saga has been going on for so long that people are starting to not care, but a recent set of negotiated concessions were enough to convince the head of the FCC to wave the deal though. The DoJ isn’t so sure, but they might as well go ahead with the placatory measures in the hope that it comes around eventually.

One of the biggest concessions will be selling Boost, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sprint that specialises in prepaid contracts. TMUS is pretty hot on prepaid, so regulators concluded their combined efforts would take too much choice out of the prepaid market. Since this public commitment doesn’t put Sprint in the strongest negotiating position, the challenge is to get a decent price for Boost.

According to a Reuters report a company called Q Link Wireless is prepared to shell out somewhere between $1.8 billion to $3 billion for Boost. This is coming from the Q Link CEO, apparently, so we must assume it’s legit, but it also seems like a pretty broad range. What would make him pay almost double his lower figure? Some kind of bidding war presumably, so maybe he’s trying to scare off anyone not prepared to go to three bil.

The official line is that it depends on what he sees once he looks under the hood, with Sprint not yet having publicly disclosed key metrics such as churn, popular tariffs, etc. But FreedomPop is reportedly talking to private equity about getting involved and they would apparently be prepared to go up to four bil, so this has the feel of an auction carried out via the media.