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Best Buy spends $2.1 billion to buy 50% of Carphone Warehouse

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has gone shopping across the pond, and will be spending about $2.1 billion in cash to purchase 50% of the UK's Carphone Warehouse mobile telephone retailer. Best Buy is signaling to the retailer world that it thinks mobile is the place to be, after it committed to expanding mobile market share here in the U.S. just recently in a large way.

This multi-billion commitment to Carphone Warehouse will allow the European retailer to pay down debt and gets Best Buy a foothold in the European retail business in a pretty large and immediate way. Along with Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), U.S. retailers are seeking out ways to expand their footprints globally. Carphone Warehouse isn't just a small step in that direction, as it's one of Europe's largest mobile phone retailers.

Best Buy's revenues continue to soar on an annual basis, and this partnership should add to that amount significantly. While U.S. competitor Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) has had nothing but troubles recently and is just hanging out in la-la land while delivering substandard results every quarter, Best Buy is going for the jugular -- still growing sales and taking market share in the U.S. and now in Europe. Can it be stopped? For now, there's no equal -- so, no.

Will Best Buy bid on the U.K.'s Carphone Warehouse?

Although Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) is the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. these days, the company has grand ambitions in China and other international markets to fuel its quest for growth sustainability. How about growth -- and acquisitions -- in the Europe electronics theater?

Europe's largest wireless handset retailer -- Carphone Warehouse -- may become an acquisition target soon, according to Jimmy Yates with CMC Markets. Potential suitors are said to be Vodafone (one of Europe's largest wireless carriers) and ... Best Buy. Would Best Buy want to buy Europe's largest wireless handset retailer in order to become one of Europe's largest wireless resellers?

Best Buy already owns 3% of Carphone Warehouse, having joined with the company in 2006 for a partnership to launch standalone wireless stores in the U.S. Would Best Buy like to expand that kind of partnership in the more competitive European wireless landscape?

Sure -- wireless is a more saturated market in Europe, but customers never get tired of changing phones or wireless carriers. If Best Buy really sees that kind of profitable future in wireless handset retailing, Carphone Warehouse would make an excellent entry point into the arena.

Time Warner sells AOL UK to Carphone Warehouse for about $488 million

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) has finalized its plan to sell AOL UK, the last of the three AOL Europe assets that the company has been shedding. The price tag: 370 million British Pounds, or about $687-688 million US on currency conversions. The buyer: Carphone Warehouse, which despite the unlikely name, is a player in the UK residential telecom market.

AOL will continue to provide co-branded audience services and will manage the online ad sales for the combined customer base in a revenue sharing plan. AOL will also provide the co-branded portals and content. This will cover all of AOL's approximately 2.1 million access accounts, which is about 1.5 million broadband and 600,000 dial-up accounts.

GBP 250 million will be paid on completion and the balance paid in three installments over the following 18 months through an extension of existing Carphone Warehouse bank facilities. The transaction is due to complete by 31 December 2006 and is subject to EU competition authority clearance, although this is expected to go through and there are no known major hurdles to any such deal approval.

Charles Dunstone, CEO of Carphone Warehouse, said: "The acquisition of AOL's UK Internet access business is transformational for our broadband business. This deal gives us significant scale to complement the rapid organic growth of our free broadband proposition."

Continue reading Time Warner sells AOL UK to Carphone Warehouse for about $488 million

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Last updated: November 11, 2009: 12:28 AM

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