Comcast considers buying Roku- RPT
Myles Udland, Brian Sozzi, and Julie Hyman discuss Comcast’s interest in acquiring Roku as Comcast plans to better position itself in the media landscape.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Well, we might see more media consolidation coming, streaming consolidation coming. There are some reports that Comcast is looking for a target. It could be looking to Viacom CBS. It could be looking to Roku. Brian Sozzi, we saw some share reaction yesterday that kind of continues into today here on these potential deals. I'm not sure what would make the most sense. I don't know.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, this is a really in-depth and interesting report out of the Wall Street Journal, looking at how Comcast could better position for a future of a very changing media deal. And the report is saying that perhaps Viacom is a target for a Comcast, or Roku could be a target. But there's hiccups in each potential deal first. I mean, Roku is now valued at $57 billion.
And I know founder and CEO Anthony Wood, he used Roku. I mean, this is his life's work. He has been reluctant, I think, in the past to consider a deal. And any deal would be very costly for a Comcast, whose market cap is about $260 billion. And then you have Viacom CBS. Its market cap is cheaper versus Roku, $28 billion. But still, how would you get past regulators that you would have an NBC and a CBS under the same umbrella? That would be a really tough sell.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I mean, I don't see-- I don't think anybody sees that happening, right? So you take the Viacom assets, put them together with some of the Comcast assets. And the NBC and CBS operate independently would be the only way forward. But it is just interesting that we were, what, four years ago, five years ago, I remember that-- well, I guess it was six years ago. August 2015, Bob Iger had that famous earnings call with Disney where he talked about how basically ESPN was getting crushed, was when they admitted that they had a massive subscriber problem with that part of the business.
And from that day forward, they began to push into ESPN Plus, Disney Plus, all these different streaming services. So that sort of began the major unbundling that we're seeing in the media. And here we are, six years later, and we're re-bundling it, you know? That's the media cycle. You take things apart, you put them back together.
We've seen our own company getting taken apart. And now some of it is getting put together with some other stuff with the BuzzFeed SPAC that we're seeing today. [INAUDIBLE] Complex, you know, Verizon investor there. And so, I guess, it's the re-Legoing of the media space today. And then in five years, we can go back and talk about everything getting spun off again.
JULIE HYMAN: Somebody is making a lot of money-- that's all I know. And it's not us.
