AT&T spent $48.5B on DirecTV, then wrote off $15.5B and sold it for $7.6B

In July 2015, AT&T completed its acquisition of DirecTV for US$48.5 billion (US$67.1 billion including debt). The deal was the centerpiece of CEO Randall Stephenson's strategy to transform AT&T from a phone company into a vertically integrated media and telecom giant. DirecTV, then America's largest satellite TV provider with 20 million subscribers, was meant to give AT&T a direct distribution channel for content and a bundled offering that wireless-only competitors could not match.

The strategy assumed that pay-TV would remain a stable business that AT&T could cross-sell with wireless and broadband. Instead, cord-cutting accelerated. DirecTV lost millions of subscribers every year as viewers switched to streaming services. AT&T's debt load swelled to US$200 billion from the combined cost of DirecTV and Time Warner, and the promised synergies never materialized.

In February 2021, AT&T admitted defeat. It spun off DirecTV into a separate entity and sold a 30% stake to TPG Capital at a valuation of US$16.25 billion — one-third of what AT&T had paid. In January 2022, AT&T took a US$15.5 billion non-cash impairment charge on its remaining DirecTV stake, formally acknowledging that the satellite TV business was worth a fraction of the purchase price.

In September 2024, AT&T agreed to sell its remaining 70% stake to TPG for US$7.6 billion. The deal closed in July 2025. Altogether, AT&T spent US$48.5 billion to acquire DirecTV and recovered roughly US$13 billion from the TPG transactions — a loss of more than US$35 billion, not counting the decade of debt service and management distraction. The DirecTV acquisition was one of the most expensive strategic failures in telecommunications history.