Private equity firm Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners has agreed to what it calls the largest private equity purchase in the U.S. this year. The company has signed to buy Astound Broadband, a combination of regional service providers RCN, Grande, Wave, and enTouch that collectively rank as the sixth-largest cable operator in the U.S. Stonepeak will pay $8.1 billion for the assets to TPG Capital and Patriot Media Management in a deal expected to close in the second quarter of 2021, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
Patriot Management, led by Steve Simmons and Jim Holanda, will retain a role in the company post acquisition. “We are delighted to partner with Steve, Jim, and the Astound team for the next chapter of growth. Astound is the premier operator of critical broadband infrastructure in the United States with a long history of delivering market leading customer service and network performance to communities across the country. In our increasingly connected society, we believe there is an extraordinary opportunity to deliver faster speeds and greater coverage, fundamentally enabling many aspects of everyday life,” said Brian McMullen, partner at Stonepeak.
TPG acquired RCN as well as Grande Communications via separate transactions in August 2016 (see "TPG Capital to acquire RCN Telecom, Grande Communications"). The firm added Wave to the mix in 2018 (see “RCN/Grande closes Wave Broadband transaction”) and agreed to do the same with En Touch earlier this year (see “TPG Capital to add EnTouch Systems to its cable MSO portfolio”). Through this combination, Astound’s brands serve more than a million customers via 23,000 miles of fiber across Chicago, Eastern Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York City, Northern California, Oregon, Texas, Washington, DC, and Washington State.
“We have created a market-leading broadband platform with national reach, broad capabilities and expertise, and exciting growth potential,” said Holanda, CEO. “We are very eager and excited to partner with a premier investor such as Stonepeak to further accelerate our growth and take our companies to new levels of customer satisfaction and performance. We also want to thank TPG for their great support and partnership over the past four years.”
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