Alltel Mounts Bid to Buy CenturyTel
NEW YORK (AP) - Alltel Corp., a wireless, local and long-distance telephone services provider, made a $6.1 billion unsolicited bid on Tuesday to buy CenturyTel, which provides local telecommunications services in more than 20 states.
CenturyTel shareholders would receive would receive a choice of either $43.00 per share or 0.6934 Alltel shares per each Century Tel share.
Alltel would also assume nearly $3 billion in debt, bringing the total value of the deal to more than $9 billion.
The new company would create a rural communications powerhouse with about 7.2 million wireless customers with more than $10 billion in revenue, Little Rock, Ark.-based Alltel said in a statement.
The merger ``would combine the highly complementary wireless and wireline markets of the two companies to create substantially expanded scale and scope and new opportunities for superior shareholder return,'' said Joe T. Ford, Alltel's chairman and chief executive.
CenturyTel did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.
CenturyTel, based in Monroe, La., is a local-exchange carrier that provides phone services in rural areas, suburbs, and small towns scattered throughout the country from Arizona to Minnesota and from Washington to Tennessee.
CenturyTel also offers cable TV, long-distance, Internet access and business data services, and security monitoring in some markets. The company is upgrading its analog cellular systems to digital TDMA (time division multiple access) technology.
Alltel is the sixth-largest U.S. wireless carrier with 6.3 million customers. It has communications customers in 24 states and provides information services to telecommunications, financial and mortgage clients in 55 countries and territories.
Shares of Alltel finished trading Tuesday at $61.06, up 51 cents on the New York Stock Exchange, where shares of CenturyTel rose 15 cents to $30.62.
On the Net: http://www.alltel.com
http://www.centurytel.com
Originally published August 14, 2001.
