The deal, which was announced Thursday afternoon, sees AT&T spinning off its struggling DirecTV satellite TV business as well as its Uverse TV service and the AT&T TV Now internet TV service into a separate company called DirecTV. AT&T will hold a 70% stake in the new company, while TPG is acquiring 30%.
The terms of the deal put the value of the new entity at a little over $16 billion; back in 2015, the telco spent $67 billion in cash and debt commitments for the satellite TV provider. Since then, AT&T has lost millions of pay TV providers as consumers have embraced streaming services. Over the past two years, more than 7 million customers canceled one of AT&T's TV services.