About Charlie Ergen
Charlie Ergen, chairman of Dish Network and EchoStar, discussed the companies' planned merger in August 2023, stating that the combination would allow them to "build a new athlete for telecom" and that "a lot has changed" since the companies were separated. Ergen said the deal would strengthen the combined entity's balance sheet and extend its financial runway, while acknowledging that more work on financing would be needed. He noted that Dish had spent approximately $30 billion on spectrum over the previous 15 years and described investing in the future as essential, saying "it's always a mistake for companies to not invest in the future because eventually that catches up with you."
In earlier appearances, Ergen described Dish's commitment to building a greenfield 5G network, saying the company was "taking every single penny that DISH has ever earned" and investing it in wireless infrastructure. He characterized the effort as important for the country and said Dish aimed to be the first standalone 5G network outside of China. Ergen also expressed concerns about competition, describing T-Mobile's plan to shut down its CDMA network as "clearly an anti-competitive effort aimed at Dish" that would affect Boost Mobile customers. On workplace culture, Ergen told employees that Dish should be a meritocracy without discrimination based on sex, race, or background, and that the company's diversity helps it serve a diverse customer base.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Charlie Ergen's recent appearances.
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Transcript (8 segments)
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Interviewer0:10
And EchoStar and Hamid, the CEO of EchoStar. Good to have you both. Charlie, it's been a long time. Sorry we're not in person, but I'm happy to see you. 15 years ago, you said, let me look here, when you spun off EchoStar, that it would enable the companies to pursue the strategies that best suit their respective long-term interests and allow employee incentives and the like to be tied to the company's performance. Now you're saying that it's compelling because it's all about growth and building long-term sustainable businesses. What changed so you're bringing these two back together?
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Charlie Ergen0:47
Good morning, David. A lot has changed. The biggest thing is we can really build a new athlete for telecom. There has been a lot of... you can use both together. With the advent of lower satellites and lower cost launches and of 5G standards, you now can put those things together. We built this that has a tremendous amount of resources, worldwide spectrum, expertise in both telco and satellite, network management skills, it all comes together. And so while that didn't exist 15 years ago when we spun the companies off, but now it makes sense to put them back together.
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Interviewer1:41
Charlie, what I hear from many investors is the continued question of how much capital you're going to need to successfully build out your wireless business, and many would view this deal potentially under that perspective as giving you access to EchoStar's balance sheet.
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Charlie Ergen2:12
It strengthens our balance sheet and the runway for the next couple years, but there will be more to do on that. We know we have a lot of capability and assets and we know that we have to continue investing in the future. It's always a mistake for companies to not invest in the future because eventually that catches up with you. We've been investing for over a decade and where we think connectivity is going, and I think that's going to position us well for the future. But certainly we're in a stronger position today than we were yesterday.
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Interviewer2:44
Yeah. I mean, you spent almost $40 billion buying spectrum and the question is, do you have enough money? You don't seem to have access to the capital markets at least at a level you would like to be able to borrow at.
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Charlie Ergen3:10
The market doesn't totally understand the capital that we need. That may be partly our fault, but we have a tremendous amount of assets. The company allows us to grow parts of our business and maybe Hamid can talk about EchoStar and some of the things that they're doing because they are cash flow positive, EBITDA positive, so they bring a lot of skill sets. When you put the companies together there are some synergies and business opportunities we otherwise wouldn't have.
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Interviewer3:36
Hamid, we'll come to you. You're going to be running a company that's challenged in some of the core businesses, the satellite TV business, you just reported lost 294,000 subscribers. I think you're below half of your previous size. EBITDA burden from the wireless build out. Revenues running at a rate of... company?
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Hamid4:11
So here's where we have technology meeting opportunity. I think we have a unique portfolio of assets here that provide us with almost any form of connectivity. We have anything from engineering and manufacturing and, you know, content delivery and mobile wireless. We ought to bring this together in a synergistic way. There's synergies to be created and more importantly, bringing products to market bundled properly. There's 17 million households in the United States that do not have proper broadband connectivity. That's a requirement to participate in digital economy. We have 18 million subscribers spread across three or four lines of business in the combined company. I think this opens up a lot of doors for us to bring new products to market.
