Florida Joins Other States Supporting Sprint, T-mobile Merger

(RTTNews) - The U.S. State of Florida has joined the other six states to endorse the settlement reached by T-Mobile US Inc. (TMUS) and Sprint Corp. (S) with the U.S. Department of Justice for their proposed merger. The DoJ conditionally approved the merger in late July.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced that the state is joining the U.S., Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota to give support for the DoJ settlement. The settlement now needs to be approved by the court.

The settlement reached by the DoJ in June with the telecom companies had asked for substantial divestitures in order to enable a viable facilities-based competitor to enter the market. The settlement would also facilitate the speedy deployment of multiple high-quality 5G networks in the U.S.

The settlement terms require the companies to divest Sprint's prepaid business, including Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Sprint prepaid, to Colorado-based satellite television provider Dish Network Corp. (DISH).

It also requires the divestiture of certain spectrum assets to Dish and the companies must make available to Dish at least 20,000 cell sites and hundreds of retail locations.

Further, T-Mobile is required to provide Dish with robust access to the T-Mobile network for a period of seven years while Dish builds out its own 5G network.

The DoJ's Antitrust Division and now seven co-plaintiff states, who sued to block this transaction, have agreed to settle the lawsuit based on the proposed settlement. If approved by the court, the settlement would resolve the DoJ's and the co-plaintiff states' competitive concerns.

In April 2018, T-Mobile US, a unit of German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY.PK), agreed to merge with Sprint, a unit of Softbank Group Corp., in a $26.5-billion all stock deal. The combined company will be named T-Mobile. The merger is now scheduled to close in the second half of 2019.

The merger would be at a fixed exchange ratio of 0.10256 T-Mobile shares for each Sprint share or the equivalent of 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile US share. It represented a total implied enterprise value of about $59 billion for Sprint.