What's DirecTV Actually Worth to AT&T?

If last week's headlines suggesting that telecom giant AT&T (NYSE: T) should shed its pay-TV service DirecTV rang familiar, there's a reason. The topic was broached in September 2019 as well. Though, for the record, the idea has been in circulation since the middle of last year, when reports emerged that DISH Network (NASDAQ: DISH) was entertaining the idea of a merger with its peer. Indeed, the idea that AT&T would be well-advised to sell its struggling satellite TV business has been in the back of a lot of investors' minds for a while now.

It hasn't happened yet, of course, but the fact that discussions of it continue to be revived raises several questions, chief among them: What is DirecTV actually worth to AT&T?

It's not laid out in detail on AT&T's income statements, but within the finer print of the company's quarterly and annual filings, it divulges some of the specifics. Last fiscal year, AT&T collected $32.1 billion in video entertainment revenue from consumers. That figure -- which was just over 22% of the company's total 2019 revenue of $142.4 billion -- includes the income from all of its TV services, including those not part of the DirecTV family like AT&T TV and U-Verse television. Still, DirecTV provides the lion's share of this unit's revenue.

Source Fool.com