Comcast Plans Change In Stock Structure

Comcast board of directors approved a plan to reclassify its Class A Special Common Stock into regular Class A common shares.

A regulatory filing reiterated that the Roberts family controls more than 9.4 million Class B shares, or 100 percent of that stock class. That “includes 9,039,663 shares of Class B common stock owned by a limited liability company, of which Mr. Brian L. Roberts is the managing member, and 404,712 shares of Class B common stock owned by certain family trusts, of which Mr. Roberts and/or his descendants are the beneficiaries”, the filing said. Previously those investment funds only had to own Comcast common stock.

Those shares now account for 85.4% of Comcast’s economic value, while the non-voting ones account for 14.2%. At present there are about 347 million Class A Special shares outstanding, compared to almost 2.1 billion Class A shares.

The move will expand voting rights to all holders of publicly traded Comcast shares and shareholder voting power will remain at just 66 and 2/3%, with Roberts controlling the rest. Each B share carries 15 votes, amounting to 33 percent control of the company.

Comcast long has had two classes of publicly traded stock.

The proposal would reclassify all of the cable television operator’s Class A special common stock into Class A common stock, subject to shareholder approval.

The board approved the reclassification over the weekend. A final shareholder vote will have to wait until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reviews the proposed reclassification.

“We believe the reclassification of CMCSK into CMCSA will benefit Comcast’s shareholders in many ways, including by eliminating investor confusion caused by having two classes of publicly traded stock and improving the trading liquidity for all shareholders”, the company said in a statement.

Why change now? The complicated structure began to affect a lot more investors in August when Standard & Poors made a decision to add non-voting shares of companies including Comcast, Fox, and News Corp to the S&P 500.