Wall Street: Comcast getting great deal on NBCU

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Getting cash sooner rather than later made GE a motivated seller this time. The Fairfield, Conn., company plans to use the money to buy back stock and "to invest in our industrial business," GE CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement Tuesday.

Comcast, which is based in Philadelphia, said it would finance the deal with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion in debt owed to GE, $2 billion from its own credit lines and $725 million in preferred stock issued to GE. In issuing new debt notes to GE, Comcast is able to lock in today’s historically low interest rates. It also gives a use for the $5.3 billion it raised from the sale of wireless spectrum to Verizon and its stake in the A&E TV networks to Disney and Hearst last year.

Comcast’s stock rose $2.35, or 6 percent, to $41.32 in morning trading. In opening trading, it hit $42, matching an all-time high set in March 1999. GE’s stock rose 77 cents or 3.4 percent, to $23.35. The day’s high of $23.44 was the highest level for the stock since 2008.

GE’s history with NBC goes back to 1919, when it co-founded the Radio Corporation of America. RCA created NBC in 1926 as the nation’s first radio network, figuring that people would buy its radios if they had interesting things to listen to. RCA took full ownership of NBC in 1932.

The network began TV broadcasts in 1939 and produced TV’s first star in 1948 when Berle became a beloved figure. GE bought NBC back in 1986 for the cash flow. Though it faced fierce competition over the decades, NBC was formidable in the 1990s, with Thursdays declared a "must-see" night of television.

As part of Comcast’s takeover, NBC Universal changed its corporate logo to NBCUniversal — without the space, the peacock or the globe silhouette. In December, as the network bounced back, Comcast appended NBC’s peacock logo on top of its corporate name in a new logo of its own.

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Liedtke reported from San Francisco. AP Technology Writers Barbara Ortutay and Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this story.

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