Chilean DTH (direct to the home) company TuVes acquired Claro’s satellite operation, the sale of which was one of the conditions imposed in October 2022 by the national economic prosecutor’s office to approve the América Móvil unit’s merger with local telco VTR.
The sale was completed on December 29 last year, Miguel Amunátegui, one of the bankers in charge of the operation, reported on social networks. The terms of the operation were not disclosed.
Claro split off the satellite operation after the merger with VTR and since then it has been managed by a trust.
“This was a challenging mandate, involving not only the sale process of a conventional M&A transaction but also the ownership and management of a newly created company that was once the satellite TV product line for ClaroVTR,” said Amunátegui.
Claro DTH has a 5.4% video market share with nearly 169,000 subscribers, according to the latest data from regulator Subtel as of last September.
At the same date, TuVes had barely 11,000 subscribers, or 0.4% of the market.
With the acquisition of Claro DTH, TuVes moves up to fifth place in a market led by VTR with a 28.3% share as of September, while Claro Comunicaciones had 4.4%. Other important players are Telefornica (21%) and Mundo Pacifico (12%). All of them offer video services with fiber or HFC wired networks.
The satellite market is led by DirecTV, which had an 18.6% video market share and 579,467 subscribers as of September 2023.
TuVes is controlled by Argentines Eduardo and Claudio Stigol, who also have shares in Venezuelan company Inter, according to Chilean newspaper La Tercera.
Recently, Mexico’s América Móvil and VTR-controller Liberty Latin America agreed to capitalise their ClaroVTR joint venture to the tune of 972bn Chilean pesos (US$1.09bn).