Discovery Finding ‘Supercharged’ Growth Overseas: CEO
Discovery Communications is planning to buy SBS Nordic and take a 20 percent of Eurosport Group as it sees better growth opportunities outside the U.S., CEO David Zaslav told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Friday.
"We're the leader outside the U.S. in pay-TV and the growth outside the U.S. is much more substantial," he said, noting that there's less competition and the technology in places like Latin America still lags the United States.
Overseas now makes up about 35 percent of the company's business, Zaslav noted.
Discovery, whose cable channels include Discovery, TLC and Animal Planet, will pay $1.7 billion for SBS Nordic to add to its position in Scandinavia.
In addition to being a "great value," Zaslav told CNBC, "this deal will be accretive immediately, which makes it really attractive for us."
He added, "This supercharges that international story and reinforces the fact that as a global company we're more stable and positioned for growth."
While Friday's announced deals will help boost growth internationally, Zaslav said Discovery is still finding "substantial growth" domestically.
"In November we grew our market share in the U.S. by 20 percent and for the year, we're growing high single digits," he said.
