(Bloomberg) — Verizon Communications Inc. is interested in buying back US Cellular Corp.’s stake in its Los Angeles business if the companies can agree on a reasonable price, the chief of Verizon’s consumer division said.
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US Cellular owns a stake in Verizon’s Los Angeles market segment, and Verizon has long been eager to buy it back, Verizon Consumer CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday. He said the company would only strike a deal if the price were right, and it wasn’t clear whether an agreement would be reached. Sampath declined to say what Verizon would view as a fair price.
“I want to buy that back — I’ve been quite open about it,” Sampath said. “But it has to be at a price that makes sense for us.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Verizon and T-Mobile USA Inc. were in talks to buy portions of U.S. Cellular, a carrier with more than 4 million wireless subscribers in 21 states. Over the past few years, rivals AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile have taken market share, as Verizon’s has slid. From 2021 to 2023, Verizon’s portion of the US retail wireless market dropped to 35.2% from 36.5%, according to data gathered by Bloomberg. In a bid to restore growth, Sampath has hiked prices and offered add-on perks such as bundled Netflix and Max streaming plans.
Verizon customer losses have eased but not ended, with the carrier reporting shedding 158,000 retail mobile wireless subscribers in the first quarter.
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