Cebridge Closes Cox Acquisition
Combined Company to be Renamed Suddenlink Communications
ST. LOUIS (May 5, 2006) – The management team of Cebridge Connections announced today that they have officially closed their acquisition of cable systems from Cox Communications, creating a company that ranks as a top-10 U.S. cable system operator, serves approximately 1.2 million customers, and offers a range of advanced services, including digital television, telephone, and high-speed Internet access. (Upon closing the announced acquisition of Virginia and West Virginia cable systems from Charter Communications later this year, the company will serve approximately 1.4 million customers.)
Cebridge executives also confirmed that they intend to re-brand their company as Suddenlink Communications, using the tagline “Life Connected.”
“The Cebridge name has served us well for more than two years,” said Chief Executive Officer Jerry Kent. “However, with this transaction and our announced acquisition of systems from Charter, we felt it was appropriate to mark the start of a new era with a new name.”
The Suddenlink name is the result of a series of steps, which started in January when Cebridge retained the services of a New York-based naming team from Landor Associates. Those steps wrapped up last month with final logo and tagline treatments from St. Louis-based Schupp Company.
During this time, the Landor and Cebridge teams, along with various employees of the new company, generated more than 2,000 potential names – many of which fell out of the running based on legal searches of names claimed by other companies. Ultimately, Suddenlink was selected based on both its availability for legal registration and its strong performance in surveys of customers and potential customers, who said they found the name interesting and would like to learn more about the company, its products and services.
Survey respondents also felt the Suddenlink name conveyed a number of important attributes such as “technologically advanced,” “user friendly,” and “high quality.”
“More so than any other name we considered, Suddenlink proved to be very consistent with the kind of company we are trying to build,” said Mary Meier, Cebridge’s Senior Vice President of Marketing. “That company will be diligently focused on unlocking opportunities for its customers; on ‘suddenly delighting them’ with robust connections to the worlds of entertainment, information, and communication.”
Meier added that the company will start introducing the new name, logo, and tagline (collectively, the “new brand”) to customers in the acquired Cox markets this month and next. By July, the new brand should appear on former Cox customers’ monthly bills, and on former Cebridge customers’ bills by September. A redesigned Web site will be launched in August or September, but until notified otherwise, Cox customers should continue using www.cox.com and Cebridge customers should continue using www.cebridge.net. Meier said she expects the final steps of the transition – covering office and truck signage and employee uniforms – to be completed by or before the end of the year.
Finally, while customers, communities, and others will know the company as Suddenlink, the holding company will be titled Cequel Communications, a derivative of the Cequel III name, which will continue to identify the independent management firm responsible for the cable company’s development since 2003.
“The Cequel name is well known among our investors, banks, and other financial audiences,” said CEO Kent. “For that reason, we made the decision to set up our legal structure so that a Cequel-named entity serves as the parent company, while Suddenlink, which is more relevant to customers, will be used in our daily operations.”
For more information, contact:
Pete Abel, 314-315-9346
Gene Regan, 903-579-3204
