Cable giant Comcast has announced plans to buy rival Time Warner Cable in a deal worth more than $45 billion. If approved by shareholders and federal regulators, the deal would give the newly combined company about 30 million subscribers across the nation. The merger between the companies could have ramifications for the alarm industry as well, as both Comcast and Time Warner Cable have been among the recent entrants to the home security and automation space. However, industry experts believe that it’s still too early to speculate on what this deal will mean for the companies’ respective security offerings or how it may impact their share of the market.
At the recently held Barnes Buchanan Conference, Michael Barnes, founder of M&A advisory and consulting firm Barnes Associates, estimated that all of the new players combined only had a one to two percent share of the market in 2013.
“At a minimum, if the deal happens, Comcast is just that much bigger...with more customers and deeper reach in to most of the country,” Barnes told SIW when reached via email last week. “They were already huge, so I am not sure this really would make that much difference in their success (current or pending) with their alarm offering.”
With that being said, if the companies do merge, Barnes said that there will also be a number of internal issues that they will have to deal with.
“Albeit a minor/temporary point, merging companies is tough. (There is) lots of sorting out to be done with respect to how and what to combine,” said Barnes. “Often, in the short-run, efforts are stalled and/or unfocused while everything is decided and any combining that is going to be done is executed. It would fair to assume this effect would impact the alarm effort, as well as the rest of the organization.”