CBS Gets Takers for $800B in Debt Buyback

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CBS says it wound up buying back a little more than a third of the debt it had targeted in tender offers of cash for four tranches of notes.

The offer expired at 5 p.m. Monday (Aug. 18), and CBS said Tuesday it had gotten takers for $802,510,000, or 37% of the $2,126,453,000 worth of notes it wanted to buy back.

Essentially, CBS was looking to get a better rate than the 7%-8% it was having to pay on the debt, like refinancing a mortgage to lower the monthly payments.

But a lot of those debt holders were liking that rate, with notes not due until 2019, 2023 and 2030.

CBS was willing to pay a $368.11 premium on each $1,000 of debt to get the 2030 notes back and got a third of them for a total of $423,187,000 of those tendered.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.