Comcast Shareholders Approve Plan to Reclassify Stock

By Chelsey Dulaney 

Comcast Corp. said its shareholders have approved its plan to reclassify some shares in the company, a move by the cable giant to simplify its equity structure.

As a result of the approval, Comcast said it will reclassify shares of Class A special common stock as Class A common stock on Friday.

The two classes existed in part as a result of Comcast's acquisition of AT&T Inc.'s cable operations, which it agreed to buy in 2001 for about $44 billion.

Comcast has said the reclassification will benefit shareholders by "eliminating investor confusion" caused by the existence of two classes of publicly traded stock and "improving the trading liquidity of our publicly traded stock."

Comcast reported in an October regulatory filing that it had about 2.1 billion shares outstanding of Class A common stock and about 347.3 million shares outstanding of Class A special stock.

The roughly 9.4 million Class B shares held by the company's founding Roberts family will remain untouched.

Write to Chelsey Dulaney at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 10, 2015 10:17 ET (15:17 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.