Cable legend John Malone, just days after converting his super-voting shares in Discovery Inc. to common stock for no premium to help facilitate its merger with WarnerMedia, has agreed to sell his Class B shares on TV and online retailer Qurate Retail Group to long-time lieutenant Greg Maffei, for about $400 million in cash or stock.
News of the filing first appeared in The Information.
Qurate includes the two largest home shopping channels -- QVC and HSN -- as well as online retailer Zulily, Cornerstone Brands and green energy and other investments. .
Malone, 80, helped found the modern cable business as chairman of Tele-Communications Inc., and has left his mark on practically every major cable deal in the past 20 years. He agreed on May 18 to sell his Qurate super-voting shares, which give him 41% voting rights in the company, to Maffei for $14 per share, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents. Qurate stock currently trades around $13 per share. According to the filing, Malone would get paid in either cash, stock “or such other form of consideration as to which Mr. Maffei and Mr. Malone may mutually agree.”
Maffei, who is CEO of Liberty Media and chairman of Qurate and several other Liberty holdings, joined Malone in 2005 after stints at Microsoft, 360Networks and Oracle. The two have been partners on several big deals, including the 2013 purchase of a 27% interest in Charter Communications.
According to the SEC document, Malone agreed to the sale on May 18, pending board approvals. The document added that while he supports Qurate’s long-term strategy, he wanted to accept Maffei's offer “because it would provide flexibility for certain long-term estate and tax planning goals in light of potential changes in federal tax laws.”
The document continued that the sale is contingent on the approval of Qurate’s board of directors. Qurate also has call rights to Malone’s Class B shares, and if the company exercises that right, Malone said he would prefer to receive payment in the form of Qurate common stock, “such that he would continue to hold a substantial investment in Qurate Retail.”
Malone earlier agreed to convert his Class B super-voting shares in Discovery, which usually carry 10 votes each, on a 1:1 basis into common shares for no premium, a move that helped Discovery move forward with its planned merger with WarnerMedia. In a statement after that deal was announced, Malone said that he neither asked for nor received a premium for converting his Discovery stake.
“I believe we are creating real value for shareholders and a legacy investment for my grandkids,” Malone said in the statement.
Discovery’s super voting shares usually trade at around the same price of its common stock, but in the past several months, because of a sell-off by hedge fund Archegos Capital (which also shorted ViacomCBS stock), their value has soared. Bloomberg estimated that Discovery’s Class B shares have traded as high as $128 each at one point -- more than four times the Class A share price of around $32 per share. By converting his Class B shares on a one-for-one basis, Bloomberg estimated that Malone could lose about $280 million on the deal.
That is in contrast to Discovery’s other major holder of super-voting shares -- Advance Publications, controlled by publishing giants the Newhouse family -- which according to Bloomberg will receive 13.1 shares of the new entity for every Class B share they own. Advance also will receive the right to nominate two board members to the new entity.
Some analysts saw Malone’s Discovery deal as his way of helping to push the transaction forward. And he still will be a large shareholder after the deal closes, meaning he will participate in any upside in the stock price in the new entity. Some have predicted that the new Discovery-WarnerMedia could be valued at as much as $46 per share, well above the current $32 price of the stock on Thursday.
