Knology Inc. said Tuesday it is in talks to sell its cable TV operations in Cerritos, Calif., just five months after buying them from Verizon Communications.
The West Point, Ga., company had said before that it wanted to find a buyer for the operations it acquired in December along with Verizon's Americast cable operations in Pinellas County for about $18.8-million in cash.
In a news release detailing its first-quarter earnings, Knology said it hopes to sign a definitive agreement on the Cerritos sale soon. The company said the proceeds from the sale would be available to pay for capital expenditures and operating expenses in Knology's other markets, including Pinellas County. The company also said it expects the proceeds to "substantially exceed" what it paid for the Cerritos operations.
In the quarter ended March 31, Knology reported a net loss of $18.4-million, or 78 cents a share, narrowing from a net loss of $20.5-million, or $406.69 a share, a year earlier. (The large discrepancy in per-share numbers was caused by the company's initial public offering in December.) The company reported revenue of $53.8-million in the first quarter, up from $40.7-million a year earlier.
Total customer connections declined from 381,815 at the end of December to 380,684 at the end of March, because of efforts by Knology to "clean up" its Pinellas customer rolls, which included customers with overdue payments or expired promotional discounts.
