John Malone in Rare Interview Discusses CHTR [VIDEO]

John Malone, Chairman of Liberty Media in an exclusive interview with CNBC talks about the company’s deal to acquire additional shares of Charter Communications. John Malone is known as one of the great CEOs, and he rarely gives interviews… so always worth a listen.

The full video along with a computer transcript can be found below:

H/T Market Folly

all day today we’ll be airing a long sitdown interview i conducted with john malone, and prove his control of liberty media and liberty global. the latest company to fall into that category, charter communications, taking malone back to where he started. cable. this is a unique opportunity to take this vehicle and grow it through both superior market and promotion and through interior growth, organic growth. sure. i think we can beexceptionally strong with that company for a number of yearsand in particular the rate of free cash flow can be very, verystrong which allows it then to access the leverage market inorder to do rollout transactions, particularly where there’s horizontal synergies, okay? that’s kind of the old tci formula.right. and that’s the growth scale and then look for opportunitiesto work with other cable companies to form consortia like we used to in the old days that called us cable mafia? you want to bring back the cable mafia? come on. with the politicalleadership. but yes, we want to bring back the days of at home, and the days of ted turner, the days when we all got together because together we provided national scale. now i think we have the opportunity to create global scale. of course, it sounds as though he’s talking about things that we may not want from a government perspective and that’s not the point he wasmaking and there are a lot of things that can come there youcooperation and whether it is at home and remember that was the first national broadband product or bailing out ted turner as the cable companies did when kirk kerkorian came calling.interesting. we’ll have a lot more on charter and the thinking behind that, you may have heard him reference already the idea of a llup. is it a consolidator charter thh tom rutledge, and itsceo that we have a great deal of respect for and so much of what he does has tax consequences. virgin media, they’rebecoming a uk company to take advantage of those tax losscarry forwards and sirius satellite. he loves those kinds ofcompanies. that’s a great skop because this man knows more about where we’re going than anybody else. david, do i now feel that what he’s saying is let’s go ininto a hotel room and fix prices. am i hearing that virgin media will take over the falteringcable companies in the world? don’t jump to that conclusion.liberty global has to finish liberty media which will probably close in may. there’s one in germany that they want to do and the idea of coming back overseas. he’s not talking necessarilyabout that, but he is talking about partnerships and things ofthat nature that can be powerful. let’s go back to the greg buffet interview which i loved. sirius radio is a very successful company. there seems to be one off, there is no other company that can be like sirius. they want to be in automobilesworldwide? i hear this international thing and i know that our cable companies have been domestic and a lot of people feel that they’ve been — there’s no more growth here and by the way, if you’re a cable programmer there’s no more growth in audience. you are fully penetrated and we’re not dealing with it again and we’ll talk with mr. malone about the bundle and you’re dealing with that world, the over the top world where people are using the broadband. so, yeah, you potentially doneed to discover and i mention that because discover is one ofthe stronger international companies if you want growth. and aereo. what’s your take on the idea that diller blows everything?y think it’s one more ship against the monopoly to a certain extent. but the stocks have been red hot? how do we pull it all together? how do we say that this group is roaring? it’s domestic because the domestic cash flow is so good and how do you relate it version us a verizon or fos? it’s not been a greatsuccess? and don’t forget the cable companies. they make most of the money from the broadband connection and not from sending you the programming and not just going back to theespns of the world.