Altice USA stock jumped 40% to $2.63 a share Monday after a report indicated Charter Communications was considering a bid for the New York-based cable operator.
The shares were up more than 50% in earlier trading.
The acquisition would give Charter a bigger hold on the New York metropolitan market, Bloomberg noted.
Charter’s stock was down 2% to $292 a share. Charter had no comment on the report.
Cable stocks have been hurt by competition from wireless broadband providers on top of the longer-term trend of cord-cutting weakening their TV business.
Earlier this month, Altice reported a net loss of $117.8 million for the fourth quarter and a $53.2 million loss for all of 2023.
Total revenue for Q4 was down 2.9% to $2.3 billion, and off 4.3% for all of 2023 to $9.24 billion.