T-Mobile acquires Mint Mobile from Ryan Reynolds in $1.35 billion deal

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T-Mobile is acquiring Mint Mobile, the budget-friendly wireless carrier partly owned by Ryan Reynolds, in a deal for up to $1.35 billion, the company announced Wednesday. The move indicates that T-Mobile wants to expand its prepaid offerings.

In a blog post, T-Mobile announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Ka’ena Corporation, parent company of prepaid wireless brands Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile, and wireless wholesaler Plum for a maximum of $1.35 billion in a combination of 39% has taken cash and 61% shares. The final purchase price is based on Mint’s performance during specified periods before and after closing. T-Mobile expects to close the deal later this year.

“Mint has built an incredibly successful digital direct-to-consumer business that continues to serve customers across the Un carrier’s premier 5G network, and now we look forward to leveraging our scale and ownership economics to deliver it – and Ultra Mobile – to improve. into the future,” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a statement. “Longer term, we will also benefit from applying the marketing formula that Mint has become famous for to more parts of T-Mobile. We believe customers will truly win with a more competitive and expansive Mint and Ultra.”

Sievert said in a video released Wednesday that the company would maintain Mint’s $15 monthly pricing.

Upon closing of the deal, Ryan Reynolds will continue in his creative role on behalf of Mint and will continue to appear in commercials. Mint’s founders, David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim, remain on board at T-Mobile to lead the brands, which will generally operate as a separate business entity.

According to a Bloomberg report, T-Mobile began considering the acquisition of Mint Mobile in January.

Mint Mobile has no physical retail stores as its operations are entirely online. The network operator’s service is already provided by T-Mobile as part of a network sharing agreement for wholesale companies. For context, Mint Mobile is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), meaning it buys wholesale access to a wireless network rather than owning and operating it.

T-Mobile is acquiring Mint Mobile’s sales, marketing, digital and service operations and plans to leverage its supplier relationships and distribution scale to help the brands grow and offer more consumers competitive prices and a larger device inventory. The company will also leverage Mint’s D2C digital marketing to reach new customer segments and geographies.

The company says Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile will complement its current prepaid service offerings, which include Metro by T-Mobile, T-Mobile-branded prepaid and Connect by T-Mobile.