Time Warner Cable

Not to be confused with Turner Broadcasting System, the cable channels division of Time Warner Inc..
Time Warner Cable Enterprises Inc.
Time Warner Cable
Public
Traded as NYSE: TWC
S&P 500 Component
Industry Telecommunications
Mass media
Founded 1973 as Warner Cable
1990 as Time Warner Cable
Headquarters New York, New York, U.S.
Area served
 United States
Key people
 Robert D. Marcus
(Chairman, CEO)
Products Digital cable
Cable Internet
Digital phone service
Home security
Cable advertising
Local news channels (Time Warner Cable News)
Regional sports networks (TWCS, TWCSN, SNY)
Revenue
  • Increase US$ 22.12 billion (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 21.386 billion (2012) [1]
  • Increase US$ 4.58 billion (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 4.445 billion (2012) [1]
Profit
  • Decrease US$ 1.954 billion (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 2.155 billion (2012) [1]
Total assets
  • Decrease US$ 48.273 billion (2013) [1]
  • Increase US$ 49.809 billion (2012) [1]
Total equity
  • Decrease US$ 6.947 billion (2013) [2]
  • Decrease US$ 7.283 billion (2012) [2]
Number of employees
 51,600 (2013)[3]
Parent Independent (2009–present)
Time Warner (2003-2009)
AOL Time Warner (2001-2003)
Time Warner (1990-2001)
Warner Communications (1973-1990)
Website www.timewarnercable.com
Time Warner Center, the headquarters of the company in New York City. It is shared by its namesake, but now unrelated company, Time Warner.
Time Warner Cable building entrance in Morrisville, North Carolina

Time Warner Cable Enterprises Inc. (TWC), formerly Warner Cable Communications and sometimes colloquially referred to as simply Time Warner Cable or Time Warner, is an American cable telecommunications company that operates in 29 states and has 31 operating divisions. It is the second largest cable company in the U.S. behind only Comcast,.[4][5] Its corporate headquarters are located in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, New York City,[6] with other corporate offices in Stamford, Connecticut; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Herndon, Virginia.[7] Time Warner Cable serves customers in the following 29 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Originally controlled by Warner Communications, later Time Warner (the film and television production company and cable channel operator), that company spun out the cable operations in March 2009 as part of a larger restructuring. Since then, Time Warner Cable has been an entirely independent company, merely continuing to use the Time Warner brand under license from its former parent (it also previously used the "Road Runner" name for its Internet service).

History

Time Warner Cable was formed in 1990 through the merger of Time Inc.'s cable television company, American Television and Communications Corp. (service areas previously belonging to that company went under the Time Warner Communications name; since the 1990s, areas that previously had that name have either been renamed to Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, or have been given to other cable providers), and Warner Cable, a division of Warner Communications, as a result of a merger to form Time Warner. It also includes the remnants of the defunct QUBE interactive TV service. In 1995, the company launched the Southern Tier On-Line Community, a cable modem service now known as Road Runner High Speed Online. That same year, talks began that would later result in Warner's acquisition of Paragon Cable. Glenn Britt (1949-2014)[8][9] was the CEO from 2001 until December 2013.

Time Warner retained Time Warner Cable as a subsidiary until March 2009, when it was spun out as an independent company.[10] Prior to the spin-out, Time Warner had held an 84% stake in Time Warner Cable.[11] Non-Time Warner shareholders received 0.083670 shares for each share already owned. This move made Time Warner Cable the largest cable operator in the United States owned solely by a single class of shareholders (without supervoting stock).[12]

Sale

It was first reported in September 2013 that Time Warner Cable was exploring a sale of the company, possibly to Charter Communications.[13] However, on November 22, 2013, reports surfaced that Comcast expressed interest in acquiring Time Warner Cable. Both companies are said to be placing bids for the company.[14] Charter reiterated its interest in purchasing Time Warner Cable and increased its bid on January 14, 2014. On February 12, 2014, it was reported that Comcast had reached a deal to acquire TWC in an overall deal valued at $45.2 billion, pending regulatory awaiting approval.[15]

On April 24, 2015, Comcast announced that it had terminated its merger agreement with Time Warner Cable.[16] Three days later, Wall Street Journal announced that Time Warner Cable had sought merger talks with Cox Communications but were rebuffed due to a lack of interest at Cox. Both companies deny that any talks took place.[17]

Residential services

As of second quarter 2009, there were 14.6 million basic cable subscribers, 8.8 million Digital cable subscribers, 8.7 million Road Runner residential subscribers, 2.5 million DVR subscribers,[18] and 4.5 million residential Digital Phone subscribers, which makes it the fifth-largest landline phone provider in the United States.[19]

Business services

As of 2013, Time Warner Cable's business division had the second largest business-facing enterprise by revenue (of cable providers who offer business services), with $1.7 billion in revenue as of the third quarter of 2013. Total revenue for 2012 was $1.9 billion.[20]

Cable Internet Service

As of 2014, Time Warner Cable's broadband service was available to over 66.9 million people across 29 states, making it the 2nd largest provider of cable broadband in the US (Based on coverage area).[5]

Naming rights

Current

Arena

Time Warner Cable Arena is located in Charlotte, North Carolina, the home of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets. In April 2008, the then-Bobcats reached a naming rights deal with Time Warner Cable, the Charlotte area's major cable television provider; the arena was named for the cable provider in exchange for the release of the team's television rights, which had been on the TWC co-owned Carolinas Sports Entertainment Television for its first season, which failed to find much cable coverage in the Charlotte market outside of Time Warner systems and went dark after a year, and then News 14 Carolina which was limited to only the North Carolina side of the market, until the arena naming rights deal was made. The team moved to the new Fox Sports South sub-feed Fox Sports Carolinas and SportsSouth with the 2008-09 season, allowing coverage through both the Carolinas.[21]

Former

TWC Field

On March 9, 2007, Time Warner Cable, which provides service to the local area, northeastern Wisconsin, signed a 10-year naming rights deal. The field is home of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, a local minor league baseball team of the Midwest League and affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, based in Grand Chute, a suburb of Appleton. The team and Time Warner Cable mutually agreed to end the rights deal after the 2013 season, and the venue is now known as Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium, named for a local neurology practice.

Acquisitions

Adelphia

On July 31, 2006, Time Warner Cable and Comcast completed a deal to purchase practically all of Adelphia's assets for $17 billion.[22] Time Warner Cable gained 3.3 million of Adelphia's subscribers, a 29 percent increase, while Comcast gained almost 1.7 million subscribers. Adelphia stockholders received 16% of Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable went public effective February 13, 2007, and the company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 1, 2007.[23]

In addition to Adelphia's coverage being divided up, Time Warner Cable and Comcast also agreed to exchange some of their own subscribers in order to consolidate key regions. An example of this is the Los Angeles market, which was mostly covered by Comcast and Adelphia (and some areas of the region already served by TWC), is now under Time Warner Cable. Philadelphia, previously was split between Time Warner and Comcast, with the majority of cable subscribers belonging to Comcast. Time Warner subscribers in Philadelphia were swapped with Comcast in early 2007. Similarly, the Houston area, which was under Time Warner, was swapped to Comcast, while the Dallas metro area was changed to Time Warner (RR).[24] In the Twin Cities, Minneapolis was Time Warner and Saint Paul was Comcast. That whole market is now Comcast.

NaviSite

Time Warner Cable purchased NaviSite (NAVI), a company providing cloud and hosting services, on February 1, 2011 for $230 million, roughly equating to $5.50 per share.[25]

Insight Communications

On August 13, 2011, Time Warner Cable announced its purchase of Insight Communications for $3 billion acquiring Insight's 760,000 subscribers nationwide. The merger was completed February 29, 2012, and as of June 2013 all of Insight Communications was absorbed into Time Warner Cable.[26]

DukeNet Communications

On October 7, 2013, Time Warner Cable announced that it has agreed to acquire DukeNet Communications LLC for $600 million. DukeNet provides data and high-capacity bandwidth services to wireless carrier, data center, government, and enterprise customers in the Southeast.[27]

Comcast

Comcast announced in February 2014 that it would attempt to merge with TWC. On April 24, 2015, Comcast announced that it would terminate its deal with Time Warner Cable Inc. to merge.[28]

Advance/Newhouse and Time Warner (Bright House Networks spin off)

Some of the regional cable system clusters operated by Time Warner Cable are owned by the Time Warner Entertainment - Advance/Newhouse Partnership (TWEAN). In 2002, Advance/Newhouse Communications, unhappy with some of the operating policies of Time Warner Cable in the AOL Time Warner era, forced a restructuring of the TWEAN partnership such that Advance/Newhouse would actively manage and operate a portion of the jointly owned cable systems equal to their percentage of equity. Under this arrangement, Advance/Newhouse enjoys the proceeds of their actively managed systems rather than simply a percentage of the partnership's total earnings. The majority of the affected systems are in the Tampa and Orlando markets under the Bright House Networks brand.

The value of this deal is that it allows Advance/Newhouse to more directly control their cable investments without having to completely unravel the TWEAN partnership, which does bring some benefits via Time Warner's development and purchasing clout.

Venture with Sprint Nextel

In late 2005, TWC and several other cable companies formed a venture with Sprint Nextel. This joint venture enables TWC customers to receive a full suite of products, linking in-home and out-of-home entertainment, information, and communications services. All of this was included in the new "Triple Play on the Go", similar to the Triple Play but an addition of new services through Sprint Nextel.

Controversies

Bandwidth metering

In 2008, Time Warner Cable began testing tier-based metered data plans in Beaumont, Texas.[29] In 2009, Time Warner Cable announced that additional cities including Rochester, New York will become additional test sites. In particular in Rochester groups have formed to stop TWC. Several groups including Stop TWC[30] and Stop The Cap[31] are currently working to oppose these efforts. On April 7, 2009, then US Congressman Eric Massa called on Time Warner to eliminate its broadband Internet cap.[32]

Signal intrusion and accidental transmission of pornography

On March 16, 2010, Time Warner Cable's transmission of their Kids on Demand and Kids Pre-School on Demand channels on systems in eastern North Carolina was interrupted by programming from the adult pay television channel Playboy TV for approximately two hours between 6:15 a.m. and 8:15 a.m./EDT, in which a group of nude women talked and posed in a sexually suggestive manner.[33] This accidental display affected Time Warner's digital cable subscribers in four towns in the system's eastern North Carolina cluster, while other areas displayed a black screen. A Time Warner spokesperson said in a statement to Raleigh CBS affiliate WRAL, "It was a technical malfunction that caused the wrong previews to be shown on our kids' on-demand channels. Unfortunately it hit at the worst possible time on the worst possible channels."[34] A Time Warner executive said normal monitoring procedures did not take effect because the glitch affected only a few areas.[35]

Cable Clusters

Time Warner Cable ident used until 2010. Still in use on its "Business Class" division.

Divisions

Current logo for the "Oceanic Time Warner Cable" division.

Time Warner Cable's Divisions, from official website :

West Region

East Region

Former divisions

Sold to Comcast

Divisions that became Bright House Networks

Products & services

2008 The company was honored at the 2008 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for development of interactive video-on-demand infrastructure and signaling, leading to large scale VOD implementations.[36]

2010 and 2012 The company was named the "Wendell Brown of Cable Companies" in 2010 and again in 2012.

2011 and 2012 Business Insider's list of Most Hated Companies in America[37] - Third Place, after Pepco and Delta Airlines. The company fell to sixth place on that list in 2012.[38]

2013 and 2014 In 2013, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) ranked Time Warner Cable as the second worst company for customer satisfaction in the United States; only the Long Island Power Authority ranked lower.[9][39] In 2014, the ACSI again ranked Time Warner Cable's television service as the second worst company, with Time Warner Cable Internet taking the lowest spot.[40]

Investor relations

2009 The company was honored by Institutional Investor as America's Best Investor Relations for sell side in the Media sector for Cable & Satellite in 2009.

2010 and 2012 The company was ranked in second place by Institutional Investor as America's Best Investor Relations for sell side in the Media sector for Cable & Satellite.

2011 Time Warner Cable is ranked among America’s most successful companies, according to Institutional Investor magazine’s All-America Executive Team rankings.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 "TIME WARNER CABLE INC. 2013 Annual Report Form (8-K)" (XBRL). United States Securities and Exchange Commission. April 24, 2014.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "TIME WARNER CABLE INC. 2014 Q1 Quarterly Report Form (10-Q)" (XBRL). United States Securities and Exchange Commission. April 24, 2014.
  3. ↑ "TWC - Time Warner Cable Inc.". Retrieved August 22, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Top 25 Multichannel Video Service Customers (2012)". National Cable & Telecommunications Association. Retrieved 2013-01-02.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Time Warner Cable Overview and Coverage". Broadband Now. Retrieved 2014-04-22.
  6. ↑ "Investor Relations Contact Us." Time Warner Cable. Retrieved on March 6, 2010.
  7. ↑ "Locations". Time Warner Cable. Retrieved July 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ "Glenn Britt timeline" (PDF).
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Henry, David; Sherman, Alex (June 11, 2014). "Glenn Britt, Who Raised Time Warner Cable Shares, Dies at 65". Bloomberg. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
  10. ↑ "Time Warner Cable Spinoff to Finish Next Month". New York Times. February 27, 2009. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
  11. ↑ "Time Warner's $9 Billion Cable Spinoff". CBS News. Associated Press. May 21, 2008. Retrieved May 23, 2008.
  12. ↑ "Time Warner Sets Final Distribution Ratio For Cable Spinoff". Dow Jones (via CNN Money). March 20, 2009. Retrieved March 27, 2009.
  13. ↑ "Analyst: Charter, Time Warner Cable Merger Looks Probable". Fox Business.com. September 11, 2013. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  14. ↑ "Charter Communications and Comcast may battle for Time Warner Cable". Los Angeles Times. November 22, 2013. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
  15. ↑ "CORRECTED-UPDATE 7-Comcast takeover of Time Warner Cable to reshape U.S. pay TV". Reuters. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
  16. ↑ Comcast. "Comcast / Time Warner Cable / Charter Transactions Terminated - Comcast Press Statement". Comcast. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
  17. ↑ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/time-warner-cox-merger-comcast/2015/04/27/id/641046/
  18. ↑ Company Highlights: Time Warner Cable - Corporate
  19. ↑ Leichtman Research Group, "Research Notes," First Quarter 2012, pg. 6, Time Warner (#5) with 4,544,000 residential phone lines.
  20. ↑ "Heavy Reading: Cable Biz Sales to Hit $8.5B | Light Reading".
  21. ↑ "Deals widen Bobcats' TV reach". Charlotte.com. April 9, 2008. Retrieved April 16, 2008.
  22. ↑ "CNNMoney.com: Time Warner to save on programming costs after Adelphia Deal - Jul, 31. 2006". CNN. July 31, 2006. Retrieved October 8, 2010.
  23. ↑ "Time Warner Press Release: Time Warner Cable Becomes a Public Company". Timewarner.com. Retrieved October 8, 2010.
  24. ↑ Ehling, Jeff (August 2, 2006). "ABC KTRK/Houston: Time-Warner Cable leaving Houston". Abclocal.go.com. Retrieved October 8, 2010.
  25. ↑ "Time Warner Cable buys NaviSite as hosting acquisitions pick up". zdnet.com. February 1, 2011. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
  26. ↑ Time Warner Cable takes over Insight
  27. ↑ "Time Warner Cable to acquire Regional Fiber Optic Network Company DukeNet Communications". Retrieved 8 October 2013.
  28. ↑ Comcast Terminates Deal with TWC
  29. ↑ Lawson, Stephen (January 18, 2008). "Time Warner to Try Tiered Cable Pricing". IDG News Service (PC World). Retrieved April 11, 2009.
  30. ↑ Stop TWC
  31. ↑ Stop The Cap
  32. ↑ Massa, Eric. "Congressman Eric Massa calls on Time Warner to eliminate Broadband Internet Cap". Retrieved April 11, 2009.
  33. ↑ Pearson, Erica (March 17, 2010). "Time Warner apologizes for accidentally showing Playboy previews on kiddie channels in N.C". Daily News (New York).
  34. ↑ Davis, Stacy (2010-03-16). "Time Warner apologizes for Playboy-kids channel glitch". WRAL.com. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
  35. ↑
  36. ↑ "Winners Of 59th Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards". Emmyonline.org. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  37. ↑ Lubin, Gus; Vivian Giang (2011-06-29). "The 19 Most Hated Companies In America". Business Insider. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
  38. ↑ Spector, Dina; Gus Lubin & Vivian Giang (2012-06-22). "The 15 Most Hated Companies In America". Business Insider. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
  39. ↑ "Benchmarks by Companies: All Companies". American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
  40. ↑ Fottrell, Quentin (December 31, 2014). "The most unpopular company in America is …". MarketWatch. Retrieved January 25, 2015.

External links