What's behind the Comcast breakup? Hope for a Disney-like valuation

Some Wall Street analysts think the NBCUniversal spinoff by parent company Comcast could set up merger possibilities on the cable side while boosting trading multiples on the media side — perhaps as high as 10 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Telecommunications giant Comcast announced Monday that it's splitting off NBCUniversal and Sky from its cable and wireless segment. The company had been trading at 12-year lows prior to the news. The cable business could be set up to merge with cable company Charter Communications and the media business could more closely resemble Disney , according to Don Bilson, head of event-driven research at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors. "As a severed entity, the cable business will be set up to merge with CHTR and NBCU will look more like Disney, which trades for 10x EBITDA," Bilson wrote Monday to clients. "Whether it might be able to draw out a suitor willing to pay much more than that, as Warner Bros. was able to do, is a question that will be conversational." Doubters Other analysts don't see any logic to a merger on the cable side resulting from the breakup. "We don't see a Netflix -for-NBCU deal," Craig Moffett, senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, wrote in a Monday note to clients. …